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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676777">Tam Len of the Elves</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon'>RetroactiveCon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Flash (TV 2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(nobody you're supposed to like dies), Bargaining, Barry Allen &amp; Iris West Friendship, Character Death, Choking, ColdFlash Big Bang 2020, Courtship, Creepy Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Fae &amp; Fairies, Family Secrets, Hypnotism, M/M, Magic, Picnics, Protective Parent Joe West</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:22:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“I, I, I want to take the roses back to my friend,” he babbles. “There was a question of my courage, and I mean, I’m not, I would rather be alive in the keep than dead out here, but I’m here now, and I want those roses. Whatever that takes.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Oh,” the faery purrs. He gives Barry a deliberate once-over before glancing up and meeting Barry’s eyes. “And what if I told you it only takes your name?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Uh.” Barry forgets everything that isn’t the faery’s eyes. He should give the faery his name. It’s such an easy request, and he has no reason to refuse. “It’s B…no.” He shakes his head to clear it and drops his eyes to the ground. “No, I can’t tell you, you’ll thrall me and spirit me away to the Otherworld.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Thrall you?” the faery chuckles. “You wouldn’t come with me willingly? I must be losing my touch.” Barry half-expects a befuddling caress, but the faery keeps his hands to himself. “Then tell me, little nameless one, has no one ever warned you to stay out of faery rings?”</em>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barry Allen/Leonard Snart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Coldflash Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This disaster of a fic started as a Coldflash take on the story of Tam Lin (the title is a play on "Tam Lin of the Elves" by Drake Oranwood) and then turned into a 'neurodivergent faeries' story and...well, now it's a dreadful mix of both. </p>
<p>Moodboards by the most excellent TheRedHarlequin, who gave me so much help and direction for this fic, can be found here: <a href="https://theroguesharlequin.tumblr.com/post/636610138417070080/my-second-moodboard-for-achangeinpriorities-s">Len,</a> <a href="https://theroguesharlequin.tumblr.com/post/636610063311781888/my-first-moodboard-for-achangeinpriorities-s-tam">Barry</a>, <a href="https://theroguesharlequin.tumblr.com/post/636610205824794624/my-third-moodboard-for-achangeinpriorities-s-tam">Len+Barry</a>!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Barry has never been outside Central Keep before. He isn’t sure he wants to go now, either, but Iris dared him to bring her back two yellow roses from Star Wood, and he can’t disappoint her. </p>
<p>Star Wood is dark within the first few steps. He’s heard it’s full of magic and mischief, and even fancies he can feel it in the air. He does his best to stay to the path, but it’s overgrown with weeds and hard to see, and before long, he’s lost. He’s considering trying to find his way back (not that he’s entirely sure how to do so) when, off the path, he spots a flash of bright yellow—the roses Iris wants. </p>
<p>“Ohhh.” He makes a low, unhappy whining noise before venturing from the path. He should never have agreed to this dare. He’s not brave, even for Iris. He would much rather be a coward and safe in the keep than a brave dead man in this accursed forest. “Get in. Get the roses. Get out.”</p>
<p>“That would be an idea,” purrs a voice that both makes Barry panic and want to melt. “If I ever intended to let you go.”</p>
<p>“Oh no no no please don’t hurt me, I know I’m trespassing in your forest but I just want to take two roses and be gone…” Barry turns around, expecting to have to search fruitlessly for the source of the voice. Instead, he finds the speaker right behind him, arms folded, slightly pointed teeth bared in a smile.</p>
<p>“And why would I let you take two roses?” the faery asks. “I could demand a toll of you for the trespass alone, and you would have no choice but to pay it.”</p>
<p>Toll? That should be worrisome, so why is Barry’s mind suddenly conjuring up images of tolls he absolutely wouldn’t mind paying? “I, I, I want to take the roses back to my friend,” he babbles. “There was a question of my courage, and I mean, I’m not, I would rather be alive in the keep than dead out here, but I’m here now, and I want those roses. Whatever that takes.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” the faery purrs. He gives Barry a deliberate once-over before glancing up and meeting Barry’s eyes. “And what if I told you it only takes your name?”</p>
<p>“Uh.” Barry forgets everything that isn’t the faery’s eyes. They’re big, almost eerily big in his face, without much white to them. The pupils are large, and the irises are a wintry blue-grey flecked with so many whirling colors that Barry can’t look away. He should give the faery his name. It’s such an easy request, and he has no reason to refuse. “It’s B…no.” He shakes his head to clear it and drops his eyes to the ground. “No, I can’t tell you, you’ll thrall me and spirit me away to the Otherworld.”</p>
<p>“Thrall you?” the faery chuckles. “You wouldn’t come with me willingly? I must be losing my touch.” Barry half-expects a befuddling caress, but the faery keeps his hands to himself. “Then tell me, little nameless one, has no one ever warned you to stay out of faery rings?”</p>
<p>Barry glances down and finds himself standing in a ring of toadstools. “Uh.” He’d heard the warning but hadn’t paid it much thought, and with the roses in mind, he hadn’t exactly been watching his step. “I guess I kind of…forgot?”</p>
<p>“Forgot,” the faery coos. “Oh, darling nameless one. Perhaps you need a faery to remind you?” He steps closer. Barry retreats half a pace. </p>
<p>“I-I, I just want to take the roses and go,” he whispers.</p>
<p>“Oh, you can take the roses,” the faery agrees. “But if not your name, what will you give me in return?”</p>
<p>Barry considers. A small but insistent part of his brain has ideas about what he could offer, but that might not be safe; faery culture is decidedly unlike human culture, and offering sex in exchange for roses might offend the faery—or, conversely, it might bind Barry to him for life. Either way, it’s not safe. </p>
<p>“I have this?” Reluctantly, he holds out the short, sturdy dagger Joe gave him. He’d said he hoped Barry would never have to use it but that he wanted Barry to have a weapon, even inside the keep. True to Joe’s wishes, Barry has never had to use it, but the time he spent learning to use it with Joe makes it one of his most prized possessions.</p>
<p>“And what use have I for a dagger when I can defend myself with magic?” the faery points out.</p>
<p>“I-it’s one of the things I hold most dear,” Barry babbles. “I thought that’s what you would want.”</p>
<p>“What about this?” The faery pulls at the leather cord of Barry’s necklace. </p>
<p>“No!” Barry leans back. “That’s—no!” He stuffs it back under his tunic. He doesn’t think the faery saw the simple brass ring hanging from the cord, but he wants it as safe and close to his heart as possible. </p>
<p>“Is it really a toll if I take something you’re willing to give?” The faery pulls again on the leather cord. “Why should I not ask for this?”</p>
<p>“It was my mother’s!” Barry bursts out. “Please, it’s all I have left of her. Take the dagger. Please.” He keeps his hand clamped on the cord. </p>
<p>“You value this very highly.” The faery finally pulls the ring out from under Barry’s tunic and stares at it. Most of the surface is hammered brass, but a vein of shimmering silver runs through it, textured like ore in the ground. Barry whimpers on seeing it in the faery’s hand. “I’ll make you a deal,” the faery says presently. “Take your roses. Leave this with me, and if you find something you consider of equal value, you can bring that to me in trade for the ring.”</p>
<p>Slipping the cord from his neck brings tears to Barry’s eyes. Rather than let the faery see him in tears, he spits, “You’re horrible. This is your forest, that much I’ll accept, but do you have to be so willfully cruel?”</p>
<p>The faery smirks. To his credit, he at least doesn’t put the ring on his finger; he slips the leather cord over his head and settles the ring upon his chest, more plainly visible than Barry would have ever dared to have it. “Like you said, it’s my forest. If I didn’t make hard deals, people would wander through constantly. The only reason I’m giving you the chance to trade for your ring is because you seem harmless enough.”</p>
<p>Barry almost bristles—he hates when people assume he can’t hold his own—but the faery’s words make him beg, “I’m harmless, I swear, I don’t need to be punished like this, I already don’t want to come back…”</p>
<p>“Go on, little one.” The faery nods at the roses. “Take what you came here for, since you paid such a dear price.”</p>
<p>Obediently, Barry cuts two yellow roses free from the bush. He holds them gingerly to avoid the thorns. “Faery?” he murmurs. After having his most prized possession taken from him, he despises the idea of talking to this faery any more, but he has to. “I don’t know the way out.”</p>
<p>The faery points through the trees. “That way. Follow as straight a path as you can, and don’t stray. Oh.” He steps closer. Barry forces himself to keep his eyes on the roses despite the not-so-small part of him that yearns for another mind-numbing glimpse of the faery’s eyes. “And if you return to trade, you’ll need to call for me. I won’t give you my full name…”</p>
<p>Damn. With his full name, Barry could put together a binding spell and eventually demand his mother’s ring back. Of course the faery is too clever for that. </p>
<p>“But when you come back, ask for Len. I’ll hear you.”</p>
<p>There’s a sudden, strange stillness in the air. It’s gone as quickly as it arrives, and in its absence, the faery is gone. Barry shakes off a chill and runs back through the forest. He’s heard faery rings can serve as portals to the Otherworld—that must have been what he felt. That eerie stillness was the Otherworld touching the human world. He hopes never to feel it again.</p>
<p>By the time Barry returns to the keep, his legs are burning and his hands sting from carrying the roses. He runs back to the Wests’ house, throws open the door, and calls in a ragged, breathless voice, “Iris, I got your damned roses!”</p>
<p>“Damned?” Iris appears at the top of the stairs. “Bartholomew Henry Allen, did you actually bring me cursed…what the hell happened to you?” She runs down the stairs in a clatter of hard soles on wood. Barry presses against the door as he shuts it, trying to get as far from the noise as possible.</p>
<p>“I met a faery.” He’s so overwhelmed that tears start flowing down his cheeks. It’s impossible for him to tell whether they’re out of grief, exhaustion, or anger. “He took my mother’s ring, Iris. Just for going into the forest!”</p>
<p>“Oh, Barry!” Iris eases the roses out of his hand. Her cool little palm presses against his cheek. He recoils before he can consciously process her touch. He’s sweaty and too warm and far too worked up to be touched. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have dared you to go in there. Dad scolded me when I told him where you’d gone, he said neither of us has a clue how dangerous the forest is…”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what to do!” Barry flaps his hands. He needs to move, needs to burn off some of this frustrated energy, or he’s afraid he’ll take it all out by snapping at Iris. “He said I could trade for my ring, but he wouldn’t accept the dagger, I don’t have anything to give him…”</p>
<p>“What about Gideon?” </p>
<p>“No!” The shock jolts Barry out of his helpless mindset. “I made her for you!”</p>
<p>Gideon is a music box with a tiny windup dancer who would, at random, bend over and point to jewelry for Iris to wear. She only has a few nice things to wear, but she struggles to choose sometimes, so Barry made Gideon to help her. It was a labor of love that took months to complete; Barry can’t fathom giving something like that to a faery.</p>
<p>“And I was the one who sent you into the forest where you got bespelled by a faery,” Iris points out. She shrugs in a way that’s trying too hard to be playful. “Besides, if you have free time, you can always make me another.”</p>
<p>Joe’s disapproving voice drifts over from the doorway. “So I’m supposed to infer from this discussion that my children did not learn their lessons about going into Star Wood?”</p>
<p>Both of them turn to face him. Barry’s heart leaps into his throat and, in the process, pushes out desperate words. “Joe, he took my mother’s ring! I <em>have</em> to get it back!”</p>
<p>Joe strides over. He’s still in uniform and evidently fresh from patrol—the wrong time to antagonize him. There’s more guardsman than father in his level gaze. “I’m half-tempted to say I hope that teaches you a lesson, going into the woods unprepared, antagonizing faeries. I taught you better than that.”</p>
<p>Barry bristles. He shouldn’t, but he can’t keep the words back. “This isn’t some toy to take away from a misbehaving child! That ring was all I have left of my mother and you’re telling me ‘good, I hope you learn your lesson’?”</p>
<p>“What do you want me to say?” Joe demands. “I taught you—taught both of you—how to avoid the kind of magic that’d take advantage of you, and what do you two do? Dare each other to mess with it first chance you get. So Barry, yes, I feel for you, but I am not letting you go back in that forest.” He clasps his hands on Barry’s shoulders. Barry wriggles free. He could barely tolerate Iris’s patient touch; he’s too hypersensitive to deal with Joe’s attempts to keep him in place. “Faeries are dangerous and capricious, and what would I do if you got dragged off to the Otherworld? You want me to have to answer to your dad about that?”</p>
<p>“Gonna be a little hard since you locked him up.” It’s Barry’s darkest rankling grievance, one he only gives voice to when he’s furious. It never fails to irritate Joe, and now is no different.</p>
<p>“Don’t pull that shit with me. Especially not with the kind of trouble you’re in. You know what I mean, and you’re not gonna risk getting dragged into another dimension for a ring. Even your mother’s ring, and yes, I know what it meant to you.”</p>
<p>“How can you?” Barry demands. He knows Joe means well, but of course Joe can’t know what that ring means to him. It was a link to all the memories he has of his mother. Without it—however foolishly—he’s afraid he’ll forget.</p>
<p>“You’re not going back.” Joe doesn’t rise to the bait; he never does. Instead, he levels a firm, no-nonsense stare on Barry. “I’m not gonna have you risk your safety for a ring. And I don’t wanna hear about either of you leaving the city to go back into Star Wood. Once was enough of a scare for all of us.”</p>
<p>Barry trudges up the stairs. He’s hot and miserable, and if he can’t go back after his mother’s ring right now, he at least wants a bath to calm himself down.</p>
<p>Iris follows. Once they’re out of Joe’s earshot, she murmurs, “You’re not actually going to listen, right? I’ve snuck out so many times for much less important things. I think it’s your turn now.”</p>
<p>He glances over his shoulder. She’s watching him with wide, encouraging eyes. Quietly, he asks, “And you mean it? About letting me offer Gideon for the ring?”</p>
<p>She nods. “I’ll have you know I’m better at choosing my jewelry now. And I mean, I…I can’t say I won’t miss her, I’ve grown used to talking to her while I dress, but it…” She ducks her head and plays with one of her curls. “It’s nothing like losing that ring. And for roses, I mean…”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t your fault,” he reminds her. He’s overwhelmed and still on the verge of tears, but he can’t let Iris think this was her fault. “I could have said no.”</p>
<p>She raises an eyebrow and asks softly, “Barry, have you ever been able to tell me no?”</p>
<p>No, he hasn’t. That’s a discussion to worry about later, when he’s more composed. For now, he just wants to rest. They can make a plan (and worry about his inability to refuse Iris anything) later.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Two days later, Barry returns to Star Wood. He has the Gideon music box tucked in his satchel. Iris had suggested taking something iron with which to threaten the faery, but Barry declined. Not only does he fear that an open threat would lose him the ring forever, but he’s always reacted badly to touching iron. There’s no point risking harm on two fronts when the faery seems willing to bargain.<p>It takes the better part of half an hour to reach the faery ring where he saw Len. When he gets there, he strides boldly into the center of the ring and calls, “Len!”</p>
<p>“Back so soon, little nameless one?” Len’s voice comes from behind him. Like last time, it goes to some primal part of Barry’s brain and makes him want to melt. “I thought it would take longer for you to find something you were willing to part with. This ring must be dear to you.”</p>
<p>Barry turns around to face him. He fumbles with the music box and drops it onto the mossy ground. “I-I’m sorry, here, it’s…look.” He retrieves the music box and thrusts it at Len. “I made it myself. The—the dancer is called Gideon. It was a gift to someone I love very much, but when she heard about you taking my ring…”</p>
<p>Len makes a soft, disapproving sound. “Then this isn’t yours to give. A shame…it’s fine workmanship.” He opens the lid of the music box, listens to the tune, and watches Gideon dance. “Extraordinary,” he murmurs. Gideon spins slowly around, bends at the waist, and extends tiny jointed arms to point at one of several niches. “I’ve not seen anything like this in the human world, only the Otherworld.”</p>
<p>Barry can’t help puffing up in pride. He knows he’s good—he’s had requests to make all kinds of clever things, including more music boxes, but each time he declines. Gideon was made out of love; otherwise, he would rather devote his time to striving for justice for his father.</p>
<p>Len makes a strange humming noise. Barry gets the distinct impression there’s something he won’t say. Instead, he closes the music box with reverence and holds it out to Barry. “Captivated as I am, I can’t take this in exchange for the ring. It’s not yours to give.”</p>
<p>“But I have permission to offer it!” Barry stares piteously at the ring still callously displayed on Len’s chest. He could try to grab it, but he gets the sense that doing so would violate some unspoken rule of their deal.</p>
<p>Len shakes his head. “It needs to be something of importance to <em>you</em>. This is your toll to pay, not your loved one’s.” He takes half a step back. “Is that all you have to offer me, little nameless one?”</p>
<p>“No, wait, I…” In desperation, Barry reaches out. “I don’t want to take it, but please can I hold it again?”</p>
<p>Reluctantly, Len stands still and lets Barry take the ring in his palm. Its weight is so reassuring that he has to blink tears out of his eyes. </p>
<p>“Where did you say you got this ring? From your mother?” Len probes. When Barry nods, he tilts his head. “And you don’t happen to know where she got it?”</p>
<p>Barry shakes his head. “I think she and my father made it together,” he admits. Turning it in his hand, following the band of silver, is its own kind of thrall, different to looking at Len’s eyes. “When I was little, she used to sit me in her lap and let me play with it—turn it on her finger, trace the silver. She told me it was a reminder to judge people by their heart.”</p>
<p>Len hums. His eyes are fixed as keenly on the ring as Barry’s, although his expression is quizzical rather than reverent.</p>
<p>“She told me some people seem like nothing—like plain, dull brass—but their heart shines if you take the time to see.” Barry beams at the ring. He can still hear his mother’s voice, calm and soothing, as he drifted off in her lap with his eyes locked on the glimmer of silver. “She said she hoped I found someone with a shining heart.”</p>
<p>Len rubs his fingertip over the ring. “If you want to get it back, you should make it sound less dear to you, not more, little nameless one.”</p>
<p>Reluctantly, Barry settles the ring against Len’s chest. “I’ll be back,” he says softly. “I’m not going to give up this easily.”</p>
<p>Len grins in a way that absolutely shouldn’t make Barry want to melt. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Rather than go immediately home from Star Wood, Barry detours to the keep’s prison, a sturdy brick building with depressingly attentive guards. (Depressingly, Barry will admit, because he on multiple occasions has tried to convince his father to run away with him. Each time, his father declines.) It’s Iris’s beloved, a guard called Eddie, who allows Barry a moment with his father.<p>“Be quick,” Eddie cautions. “You know everyone in here thinks you’re hatching a plan with your father.”</p>
<p>Barry rolls his eyes. Even if he wanted to make a plan, his father would never allow it. </p>
<p>“Dad!”</p>
<p>Through the thick bars of the cell door, Barry sees the moment his father notices him. His careworn face lights up and he bolts to his feet. “Hey, champ,” he murmurs. “How are you?”</p>
<p>“Um.” Barry can’t bring himself to say he lost his mother’s ring. It would break his father’s heart. “I, uh. I saw my first faery the other day.”</p>
<p>Henry’s eyes widen. “You…how did that happen? Faeries don’t come into the keep very often, they don’t feel welcome.”</p>
<p>“No, I know, I was…” Barry plays with his own fingers. He doesn’t want to face his father’s disappointment so soon after enduring Joe’s. Going into the forest was reckless and he’s paid for it several times over; he doesn’t want another scolding. “I went into Star Wood. You don’t have to yell at me, Joe already did.”</p>
<p>“I’m not going to yell at you, not if Joe already has,” Henry says slowly, “but I <em>will</em> impress on you that going into Star Wood was dangerous and reckless, and I can’t fathom any reason that would excuse it. There are more dangerous things in the forest than faeries. You’re fortunate you didn’t encounter any of them.”</p>
<p>He used to go into the forest, Barry recalls—both of his parents did, before his mother’s death. Their only explanation had been that his mother loved the forest, which didn’t explain why they left him with Joe and Iris each time. (Joe had told him the forest was more dangerous for children, but Barry still isn’t sure he believes that.)</p>
<p>“I know,” Barry grumbles. “But…you’re the person I know who’s most familiar with faeries, you used to tell me all those stories, remember? So I just…I need to know about them, what they like, what they don’t.” He wishes he could learn everything about their culture in the space of a conversation, but he knows he’s going to the wrong source and lacks sufficient time. </p>
<p>“Hmm.” Henry gives him a too-keen look. He has a father’s intuition for when Barry is in trouble, but he rarely presses him for details. “Faeries are as individual as humans in their likes and dislikes—if anything, they tend to be more passionate about both. But culturally? They prize honesty and openness. That’s where a lot of misunderstandings with humans come from—faeries need things clearly explained, which is a skill most humans lack.”</p>
<p>Barry chuckles. “They’re like me in that regard, then.”</p>
<p>Henry nods without much of a laugh. “Suppose so. Hmm, what else. If you’re trying to court this faery…” He says it without judgment, although he watches Barry keenly for his reaction. “They like sharing food. Cook them a meal—they’ll be delighted you went to the effort.”</p>
<p>“Court them?” Barry sputters. “N-no, no, I’m not, I’m not courting a faery!” It doesn’t matter that the faery in question has a wicked smile and a voice that makes him want to drop to his knees. He is <em>not</em> in lust with the faery who stole his mother’s ring. That would be terrible of him. “I’m just, um, curious.”</p>
<p>“Curious.” Henry doesn’t sound like he believes a word of it. Barry curls in on himself. He’s about to have to explain everything—trying to find the roses, losing the ring, going back with a subpar exchange. Instead, Henry gives him a crooked smile and soothes, “Barry. You know I’ll love you no matter your partner—human, faery, any gender. But be careful, all right? The forest is no place to take risks.”</p>
<p>Barry is spared having to answer by Eddie’s insistent tap on his shoulder. “As much as I hate to break up a touching family moment, Barry, you should go. Rounds come through in another couple of minutes, and you really shouldn’t get anyone around here more suspicious than they already are.”</p>
<p>“No,” he agrees regretfully. Against his better judgment, he sticks his hand through the bars to grab his father’s. “I haven’t given up,” he murmurs. “I’ll get you out of here.”</p>
<p>Henry squeezes his hand. “Don’t worry about me. You take care of yourself, and…” He looks up, meets Barry’s eyes, and gives a small shake of his head. “You have her eyes,” he murmurs. Before Barry can speak again, he nods toward Eddie. “Go with your friend.”</p>
<p>Reluctantly, Barry trails Eddie back down the corridor. That wasn’t nearly a long enough conversation, but at least now he has a direction: food.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Barry returns to the faery ring, he brings a meal with him. Because Len’s pointy teeth suggest a fondness for meat, he takes care to bring cubes of meat that have been cooked so briefly that the center is still pink and tender. He also brings fresh fruit and a container of cream, which according to rumor will pacify faeries. </p>
<p>“Len!”</p>
<p>“What is this?” Len’s voice is warm with amusement. When Barry turns to face him, he’s perched lightly on a tree branch that overhangs the faery ring. “You brought something so large it has to be carried in a basket?”</p>
<p>Sheepishly, Barry kneels on the mossy ground and starts to pull out the food. “Actually, I was hoping you would, um, dine with me,” he invites.</p>
<p>“Oh.” Len alights on the ground and kneels at Barry’s side. He nudges the meat with a single fingertip. “Salt-cured?”</p>
<p>“No, fresh.” Barry is wounded. He knows better than to break their tenuous deal by trying to poison Len. “I don’t want to hurt you.”</p>
<p>Len lifts the lid from the jar of cream and chuckles. “Merely get me drunk, I see. What are you hoping, little nameless one? That I’ll get tipsy and let my guard down?” He shakes his head in disapproval, although his inhuman eyes keep flitting back to the jar of cream. “Have you ever tried to steal from a faery?”</p>
<p>“N-no. And…no, that wasn’t my intention.” He’d hoped the cream would make Len feel friendly enough to give back the ring, but he had no plans to try to take it by force. “I just…I was told faeries like to share meals.”</p>
<p>“By whom?” Len takes a cube of meat, pops it into his mouth, and hums in delight. “Because whoever it was, they know their lore.”</p>
<p>“My father,” Barry admits. “He…he’s one of the few people in the keep who knows much about faeries. Everyone else…” He rubs the back of his neck, unsure if he should say something like this so readily. “They fear you, I think.”</p>
<p>“Fear <em>us</em>?” Len picks up a strawberry and holds it out to Barry. Hesitantly, he closes his lips around it. He has no idea if a faery’s touch can make food from the human world binding in some way, as he’s heard food of the Otherworld can be, but he’s loath to slight him by refusing. “We have more reason to fear humans. Before the toll for trespassing, humans would come into our forest, bind us with iron, and make demands of us. Some tortured us for fun.”</p>
<p>Barry blinks in bewilderment. He hadn’t heard it like that, but faeries weren’t known to lie—play on words or be deliberately vague, yes, but never lie. “Why?”</p>
<p>“Because we’re other. Because we’re magic. Because humans are cruel.” Len shrugs. “Take your pick.”</p>
<p>“No, sorry.” Barry shakes his head and reaches for a cube of meat. “I meant why the toll? It seems like it would only anger people.”</p>
<p>Len tips his head in acknowledgment. “It does, sometimes, but more than that, it’s gotten the forest a reputation such that most people stick to the path and don’t look for us. The few who stray from the path are either lost, like you, and learn from the toll, or they’re malicious, refuse to pay the toll, and give us grounds to attack.” He holds out another berry. “I’ve cursed three trespassers in my time as a guard.”</p>
<p>“That’s what you are? A guard?” Barry offers the jar of cream. Len makes a soft, plaintive sound before accepting the jar and raising it to his lips. </p>
<p>“Yes,” he explains between sips. “Every faery spends some time assigned to a ring, guarding that little area of forest. If you mean is this what I do all the time, no. In another year, my duty will be done, and I can return to my usual role.” He sets the half-empty jar aside and shakes his head. “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.”</p>
<p>“What’s your usual role?” Barry asks. He has the vague sense that the more he gets Len talking, the more likely he’ll be to win back his ring, but more than that, he’s fascinated by the thought of learning more about the Otherworld.</p>
<p>“I draft legislation for the court.” Len grins as though his role is a point of particular pride. “We’re meticulous about the wording of our laws. I draft some legislation, proofread others’ work, and occasionally present my drafts to the court—clarifying and revising wording as needed, and defending my or my patrons’ ideas as called upon.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that sounds brilliant.” Barry feeds him another berry. Len glances up at him with those too-wide eyes, and suddenly Barry’s thoughts start to slip away. He tries to focus on thinking, but the harder he tries, the more aware he is of how hazy he feels and how incredibly pretty Len’s eyes are.</p>
<p>“You’re darling, little nameless one.” Len gives a little giggle and walks his fingertips up Barry’s chest. Barry finds himself giggling in response. Something is funny, he’s just too blank to understand what it is. </p>
<p>“Barry,” he giggles. “My name is Barry.”</p>
<p>“Barry.” Len’s voice makes his name sound like a caress. There was…there was probably a reason he shouldn’t have said anything, but he can’t remember what it is. He wants Len to say his name again. “Look at you, little Barry. You come out here with your little picnic, trying to get me drunk and talkative, and now you’re the one who’s easy prey.”</p>
<p>Barry nods, unable and unwilling to break eye contact. He’s easy. Now that Len has control of him, he can’t remember why he would ever want to fight. </p>
<p>Len giggles and covers his mouth with his long, slender fingers. “A fine pair we make,” he murmurs. “A little entranced human and a drunk faery. Mistakes are made with less excuse.”</p>
<p>Mistakes? Barry doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need to understand. It feels really, shockingly good to just trust, rather than try to understand.</p>
<p>“Come here,” Len urges. He cradles Barry’s cheek and guides him in close. Their lips meet, a soft, careful, testing kiss. Barry’s eyes drift shut and he loses himself in it. Len’s hand is firm and callused, a counterpart to his lips, which are every bit as warm and soft as they look. </p>
<p>When they break apart, Barry’s mind still feels appealingly hazy. He considers looking back into Len’s eyes, only to realize that if he can consider things, he should probably keep his focus elsewhere. He shakes away the last of the blurry blankness and drops his gaze to the ground. “You kissed me,” he mumbles.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Len purrs. His voice has gotten slower and more playful, and somehow that only makes Barry want to listen to him more. “It’s not fair that you broke free. Now I’m drunk and disav…disadvantaged…” He sounds his way through the long word with a determination that Barry refuses to find endearing. “And you could do anything to me.” He stretches out on the ground, resembling nothing so much as a lazy housecat. “So what are you going to do, Barry?”</p>
<p>Hearing Len say his name sends a weird little shiver through him. He’s not sure whether it’s name magic, in which case he’s glad he wasn’t foolish enough to give up his full name, or just his fascination with Len’s voice. “I doubt I can ask for the ring back,” he sighs. </p>
<p>Len shakes his head. “I’m not <em>that</em> drunk,” he says, his words softly slurred and giggly around the edges in a way that belies his claim. “Ask something else.”</p>
<p>“Have you ever stolen anyone away?” Barry isn’t sure why that seems an appropriate question to ask. There are many other, more relevant things to learn, but for some reason this intrigues him. “I know faeries sometimes do.”</p>
<p>“Hmm.” Len considers. “My sister did—a darling little inventor, now a happy humanpet. But have I?” Slowly, he shakes his head. “Not to keep. I once helped a man escape into the Otherworld, but he’s not mine. He had faery blood going back a few generations, so once in the Otherworld, he adapted. Most humans stay with their patrons, but he’s independent.”</p>
<p>“Is it…safe? For the human?” Barry frets. </p>
<p>Len looks blearily offended. “We don’t mistreat our humans! That’s considered a grave crime—as bad as abusing a child, given how helpless both would be in the presence of an adult faery’s magic.”</p>
<p>Barry’s eyes widen. Somehow, he’d forgotten that faeries would have children too. He ought to keep asking about being stolen away, but the thought of baby faeries distracts him. “What do baby faeries look like?”</p>
<p>Len gets a strangely distant look and curls his arms to his chest. “They’re carried like human children for six months, delivered, and spend an additional three months in a cocoon, developing their magic. They grow silky wings—butterfly-like in shape, but more flexible—that fall off naturally at puberty.”</p>
<p>Barry imagines a small boy with Len’s bright blue eyes and dark hair, with a pair of silvery blue wings fluttering behind him. “So do the babies fly?”</p>
<p>Len shakes his head. “The wings are useless—they’re actually more like a security blanket. Most faery children keep them wrapped around themselves, unless they’re at play, in which case the wings get…” He holds his hands up to his shoulders and imitates impassioned flapping. Barry laughs. “Faeries learn to fly in adulthood, but we do so without wings. It’s more like…hmm. Like mixing with the air, traveling with the wind.”</p>
<p>Barry sighs and settles comfortably on the mossy ground. “That sounds amazing, flying like that.”</p>
<p>“I think it loses its wonder if it’s done frequently.” Len reaches over and pets Barry’s face. His touch makes Barry feel floaty and good, although he can’t tell if it’s faery magic or just his natural hunger for touch. “But to you, yes. I’m sure it would be breathtaking.”</p>
<p>Barry sighs, imagining the feeling of flying with the wind. His head rolls back and he catches a glimpse of the sky through the trees—slightly golden-hued, as though it’s getting close to sunset. “I should go,” he murmurs regretfully.</p>
<p>“Yes.” Len nods and trails his fingers down Barry’s chest. “You shouldn’t be in the forest after dark, but…I’m gonna miss you.”</p>
<p>“I’ll come back.” Barry thinks this should be self-evident. It takes him a moment to realize he’s not just talking about returning for the ring; he wants to come back for Len.</p>
<p>The look of bleary delight on Len’s face makes Barry want to hurry back. “I’ll hold you to that.”</p>
<p>By the time Barry packs up the remnants of the picnic and gets to his feet, Len is gone. He’s vaguely wounded by the abrupt departure but consoles himself that perhaps Len finds it hard to say goodbye.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Barry arrives home so late that he’s obligated to sneak in, lest he need to explain himself to Joe. Thankfully, Joe doesn’t find him. However, Iris is waiting for him in his bedroom.<p>“And where have you been all day?” </p>
<p>Sheepishly, Barry tries to hide the picnic basket behind his back. Iris’s keen eyes dart to it and she frowns. </p>
<p>“You were having a picnic in the forest? Next you’ll be telling me you—oh gods, Barry, did you take the picnic to the faery?”</p>
<p>“Um.” She knows him too well. Damn—he hadn’t thought his fascination with Len was so obvious. He makes a feeble effort to distract her. “His name is Len?”</p>
<p>Iris rubs her fingers over her forehead, mumbling something that could either be a prayer or a curse. Barry hopes it’s the former. “He stole your mother’s ring, your most precious possession, and you took him a picnic? Barry, I say this with all the love in my heart, but <em>what the fuck are you doing?”</em></p>
<p>“Um.” Barry doesn’t have a good way to explain. He sets the picnic basket in a corner and perches on the edge of his bed at Iris’s side. “I don’t know, Iris, and I’m kind of glad I don’t. I feel…<em>good.</em> I’m out of my depth, but he’s there with me and I feel…” He pauses to think about the way he wants to say this. Words are hard—less so with Iris, but he still worries about saying the wrong thing. “You know me. I go through life thinking wrong, talking wrong, feeling wrong, both emotionally and in sensory ways…it’s not like that with Len. I feel like, yes he took the ring, but he wants <em>me</em>.” </p>
<p>The reproach he’s expecting never comes. Instead, Iris studies him with keen, kind eyes. “And that doesn’t worry you?” she asks eventually. He knows what she means—he never heard the stories of faeries stealing humans until he came to live with Joe, but now he knows them all too well. Still, in this case, that fear hasn’t crossed his mind.</p>
<p>“No,” he admits. “Because I want him, too.”</p>
<p>“And if he offers to take you away?” Iris catches one of Barry’s hands in both of hers. Her palms are warm and soft—almost too soft, on first touch, but then she squeezes and the pressure is exactly what he needs. “Would you go?”</p>
<p>Barry hasn’t given that much thought. If Len asked him, he might blurt an answer without thinking about it, and the more he considers, the more he thinks that answer would be ‘yes.’ “Seeing the Otherworld, Iris? All that magic, so much to learn? How could I say no?”</p>
<p>“Because people who are taken don’t come back!” Iris squeezes hard on Barry’s fingers and draws in a slow, deep breath. Barry waits. He usually doesn’t do well around loud voices, but Iris so seldom raises her voice that when she does, it’s an indicator of utter desperation. He hadn’t even considered how much the thought of him leaving might hurt her. “And you have people here who love you, Barry—people who are counting on you. Not even just me, but my dad? And yours? If you left, they’d be devastated.”</p>
<p>“What if there was a way for me to come back?” Just because nobody has ever come back didn’t mean there isn’t a way. Nobody ever said so outright, but Barry got the impression from Joe’s stories that faeries only took people who didn’t have much to keep them from leaving. They certainly wouldn’t have much reason to return. </p>
<p>“But could you trust Len if he told you there was?” Iris glances up at him.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he says slowly. “I think I could. But…” He doesn’t want to cause her more pain when the possibility of being taken to the Otherworld is so slim. It’s easier to just dismiss the conversation. “I’ll keep thinking about it, Iris. If Len does ask me, I want to have considered all my options and have a list of questions to ask.”</p>
<p>She sighs and nods, her curls falling in front of her face. “I guess that’s all I can ask. But…if you do leave, don’t do it without saying goodbye.”</p>
<p>Barry pulls her into a hug. “No, never! You’ve been my friend forever, Iris. I couldn’t just leave you.”</p>
<p>She burrows her face into his shoulder. “Yeah,” she agrees. “You better not.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>The next time Barry goes into Star Wood, he brings another picnic—this time without the cream, as it was ineffective at softening Len up last time. (Though admittedly he was cute so giggly and relaxed.) When he arrives at the faery ring, he finds Len waiting for him.<p>“You darling boy,” Len murmurs. He steps close and lifts the picnic basket out of Barry’s hand. “You brought more food? This seems less like a quest to retrieve your ring and more like a courtship every time you return.”</p>
<p>“Um.” Barry blushes and rubs the back of his neck. “You…you fascinate me. It’s dangerous, I know, but I…I feel drawn back to you. To this place.”</p>
<p>“Dangerous indeed.” Len cups Barry’s chin and coaxes him to look up. All too willingly, Barry meets his eyes. Instantly, his thoughts blur and scatter. It should frighten him, being this empty and pliant in front of such a powerful being, but for some reason, he can’t get enough. “I could steal you away to the Otherworld before you think to complain. You’ve given me your name, little Barry. Once on the other side, I could bind you to me for eternity, and there wouldn’t be a thought left in your empty little head of the things you left behind.”</p>
<p>Barry nods. He’s only dimly aware of what Len is implying—being stolen away for good. The cadence of Len’s voice and the certainty behind every word are much easier to follow than the content of his words.</p>
<p>“But I don’t want that from you.” Len looks away. Barry is left reeling, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. “If you come with me willingly, that would be another matter.”</p>
<p>Barry shouldn’t speak while he’s struggling to think, but it’s so easy to babble without needing to worry about what he’s saying. “You would take me? If, if I wanted to go with you, would you take me to the Otherworld?”</p>
<p>The way Len freezes betrays his shock as much as his tone. “You’ve thought about this?” he asks. “I was under the impression you had quite a life here. You aren’t the kind of escapee who begs for admittance because they have nothing to lose.”</p>
<p>“No, I…” Barry shakes his head to clear it. He hadn’t anticipated this discussion coming up so quickly, and he needs to have his wits about him. “I have much to lose if I go and can’t return, but if I could visit my family <em>and</em> see the Otherworld? Immerse myself in magic, learn about an entirely new way of life? How could anyone refuse an opportunity like that?”</p>
<p>“Because most people consider us too strange for them.” Len is studying him with his head cocked. To his credit, he’s making an obvious effort not to meet Barry’s eyes; Barry wants to believe that he, too, wants his well-considered reactions to such an important discussion. “You don’t?”</p>
<p>“No.” He shakes his head. “I feel like I can be myself with you, and if that feeling continues in the Otherworld…I don’t know.” He wraps his arms around himself. “I’ve never quite…fit in. Too loud, too much, too…me. But you’re not upset by that.”</p>
<p>Len nods and nibbles at his lower lip. Barry is surprised, given the sharpness of his teeth, that he doesn’t draw blood. “Returning to the human world isn’t a common request,” he admits. “Some people find crossing to the Otherworld taxing, and as they have no reason to return, they never find out if it would be equally unpleasant in the other direction. Others have no difficulty crossing, but there seems to be no pattern, so I couldn’t predict whether it would be difficult for you.”</p>
<p>“So if I go without knowing, I could trap myself there,” Barry summarizes. </p>
<p>Len shakes his head. “No, it’s not that debilitating. If you had a motive to come back, you certainly could, although you might not want to make the trip frequently.”</p>
<p>Barry refuses to let his heart swell. Surely, if it’s as Len says, he could at least make one trip to the Otherworld. Even if he returned to the human world later and never left again, it would be worth it just for a glimpse of such a magical realm. He can’t think of that yet; he needs to be practical. “But I’ve heard time passes differently there.”</p>
<p>Len chuckles at that. “Not so. Time passes as it does in the human world, but our sense of it is different. We’re long-lived and seldom see a need to rush, so if a human urges us to ‘return quickly’ and gives no set time…”</p>
<p>“Quickly means something different to you,” Barry finishes.</p>
<p>“Yes.” Len grins. “And beyond that, most of us experience time as simply ‘now’ or ‘not now,’ and if something isn’t to be done now, it’s not urgent.”</p>
<p>Barry’s heart swells and the words burst from his lips before he can think better of it. “I do that too! It’s the bane of Joe’s life!”</p>
<p>Len smiles, his expression surprisingly tender given how much he likes to tease. “Really, Barry, I think you would find a place in the Otherworld. I just don’t know if it’s fair to steal you away given the fact that you have people to leave behind.”</p>
<p>“What if I talked to them?” Barry implores. Now that Len has made him an offer, he’ll be damned if he lets it go without a fight. “Get their permission, make a compromise. Come back to visit, if I can.”</p>
<p>“I think you’ll be fighting a losing battle.” Len reaches out and strokes his fingertips over Barry’s cheek. “No one is going to want to give their family up to the fae. But you can certainly try.”</p>
<p>“I’ll surprise you,” Barry says confidently. </p>
<p>Len nods and brushes his thumb over Barry’s lips. It’s such a light touch that Barry half-thinks he imagined it, but it leaves his lips tingling and sensitive. Somewhat belatedly, he realizes he’s primed for a kiss that doesn’t appear forthcoming. “I don’t doubt you will.”</p>
<p>There is no kiss. Instead, the two of them sit down to a picnic that, despite the absence of intoxicants, is even more charged than the last. Despite Len’s apparent lack of interest in kisses, he takes great joy in feeding Barry by hand. Like the earlier touch, this draws Barry’s attention to his own lips in a most unhelpful way. He spends too much effort reminding himself that he shouldn’t want kissed, to the extent that he half loses track of the conversation.</p>
<p>When at last it’s time for him to go, he gets to his feet regretfully, gathers up the remnants of the picnic, and murmurs, “I’ll be back with an answer, one way or another.”</p>
<p>Len watches him with an alarmingly inscrutable expression. Maybe Barry said the wrong thing. He’s about to fret and apologize and fret some more when Len says, sounding perfectly genuine, “I look forward to it.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Although Barry knows he should go immediately home, he finds himself going back to the prison and relying on Eddie’s goodwill once again. </p>
<p>“We have to stop meeting like this,” Eddie laments. </p>
<p>“What if I say this will be the last time?” Barry fails to consider the implications until the words are out of his mouth. Eddie’s wide eyes make him realize that he sounded far more ominous than he wanted to. </p>
<p>“Then I’d say it sounds like you’re either running away or preparing for your death. You’re not preparing for your death, are you? Because if Iris hears that you died and I could have intervened, she’ll kill me.”</p>
<p>Barry chuckles and darts ahead of Eddie to the familiar door of his father’s cell. “Not preparing to die, Eddie. Dad!”</p>
<p>Henry rolls out of bed with a sleepy mutter of “Champ?” Whatever he sees on Barry’s face makes him hurry to the door. “You’ve got something to tell me.”</p>
<p>Barry glances furtively at Eddie before confessing, “The faery I told you about? He…he invited me to go to the Otherworld with him.”</p>
<p>Henry’s eyes widen. “And you’re considering it.”</p>
<p>Barry wilts. He should have thought through how this would sound—that after years of trying to get justice for his father, he wants to leave for a magical realm with no way to promise when he’ll return. “It’s selfish…”</p>
<p>“No, no.” Henry reaches through the bars and lays his worn hand on Barry’s. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, son. I was invited to go to the Otherworld once—not just to visit, but to stay there, to live there. I said no.” His eyes darken. “I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d said yes.”</p>
<p>Barry has never heard this story before. “Why wouldn’t you go?” he breathes. </p>
<p>Henry sighs and shakes his head. “My parents were still living at the time, and Joe and I were close—I couldn’t leave any of them. I stayed, but I always wondered what I’d missed.” He pats Barry’s hand. “Don’t make my mistake.”</p>
<p>Barry feels strangely shivery. He came here thinking he wanted his father’s blessing; now that he has it, he realizes he was seeking the good sense not to go. “What if I go and don’t come back?” he begs. “What if something traps me there? What if I get too caught up in the magic to come back?”</p>
<p>“Then you’ll have made your choice.” His father’s voice is always so full of conviction. Barry loves and hates that in equal measures—loves it for the strength it gives him, but hates that Henry sometimes uses that tone to obscure his own feelings. “And I can stay here, knowing you’re living your life to the fullest and experiencing more than I ever did. It’s not your job to look after me, son. It’s my job to push you to live your best life, and if that means leaving for the Otherworld, then go.” </p>
<p>“Allen!” </p>
<p>Barry jerks away from the door as though he’s been burned. He’s run across Singh, the captain of the guard, only a handful of times. They seldom end well. “Sir?”</p>
<p>Singh steps up to them, eyes Henry, who’s holding up empty hands, and sighs. “Allen, this can’t keep happening. You have to know how this looks—especially given you always rely on Eddie. Whether you mean it or not, I need to be constantly alert to the risk that the three of you are conspiring to break a convicted murderer out of his cell.”</p>
<p>Barry bristles at ‘convicted murderer’ but bites down his furious retort. Arguing the validity of his father’s conviction will get him nowhere. He’s best served to keep his head down and murmur, “It won’t happen again, sir.”</p>
<p>“See to it.” Singh tilts his head down the hallway from whence Barry came. “Go on. You and I both know Joe well enough to know the questioning you’ll face if you’re home late.”</p>
<p>That much, at least, is correct. Barry needs every ounce of Joe’s goodwill if the conversation about his potential trip to the Otherworld is to go even slightly in his favor. “Yessir. I’ll just…be going then.”</p>
<p>When he arrives home, he runs immediately upstairs. It will be much easier to tell Iris first, and if she supports him, Joe will likely (if reluctantly) concede. </p>
<p>Upon knocking on Iris’s door, he’s greeted with a resigned, “You talked with the faery again.”</p>
<p>“How do you know?” Barry lingers in her doorway. Unceremoniously, she grabs him by the collar and hauls him inside. The little Gideon music box has been restored to its rightful place on her otherwise-sparse dressing table, he notes proudly. Iris had been sorry to hear that Barry had failed to trade it for his ring, but she’d handled it so carefully when he gave it back that he was grateful Len refused. </p>
<p>“Because you used to knock like that when you wanted to talk about cute people.” She plops down on the bed, lets her hands fall into her lap, and stares up at him as though he’s done her a grievous injury. “You really want to go, don’t you?”</p>
<p>“Len says I should be able to come back.” Barry perches beside her. </p>
<p>“But why would you go unless you know for sure?” She takes his hand and squeezes tight, as though if she holds him for long enough he’ll forget about the Otherworld. “What if you get there and you can’t get back? We’ll have no way to see you again. And what if it’s terrible there? You want to go to a place when you have no idea what’s waiting there?”</p>
<p>Barry tilts his head. “You’re always talking about how you want to travel—see the truth of things, see their beauty. And the potential to find terrible places or trouble along the way would be just as real for you if you left Central Keep. The only reason you’re worried about the Otherworld because we’ve been raised on horror stories about the fae that I don’t think are true.”</p>
<p>Iris hangs her head and sighs. Barry has more grounds to chide her for believing the stories than he would most people; she studies some of the misunderstood magic allowed into Central Keep and campaigns for reduction of the stigma around magic. However, even she isn’t immune the common biases against the fae. “I guess when you put it that way. I’m just…what if the stories are true?”</p>
<p>Barry shrugs. “Then that’s a risk I’m comfortable taking.”</p>
<p>“Then…” She squeezes his hand. “I’ll support you. And you’re gonna need it, because my dad will be furious.” With a severe look that makes him want to shrink, she adds, “But if you don’t find a way to come back and visit regularly, I’ll make my way to the Otherworld for the express purpose of conveying my displeasure.”</p>
<p>Sheepishly, he nods. It’s the best agreement they’ll reach, and he knows it. “Now to tell Joe.”</p>
<p>This is, predictably, easier said than done. Barry loves Joe dearly, but he’s protective—sometimes more than is necessary—and he has no patience for magic. He refused to speak to Iris for three weeks when she first began researching the trafficking of magical creatures and only conceded when she brought home a flightless harpy fledgling. Barry asking to leave at all, much less for the Otherworld, will provoke an argument the likes of which he’s done his best to avoid for years.</p>
<p>Joe’s initial reaction, once he’s told, is calmer than Barry anticipated. Barry attributes this primarily to shock. “You want to go to the Otherworld.”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Barry puts his hands behind his back and rocks, feeling distinctly like he’s twelve again and asking to go see his father. Joe had reacted furiously then; Barry doesn’t expect this to go any better, and in fact, he would be shocked if it went even a fraction as well.</p>
<p>“With that faery,” Joe says flatly. This is entirely deduction—Barry didn’t mention Len for precisely this reason. When Barry nods, Joe exclaims, “The faery that took your mother’s ring? Barr, this magical bastard stole your most prized possession and <em>taunted you</em> with it, and you think it’s at all a good idea to follow him into a world that you know nothing about, where he’d have the upper hand? Because nothing about that sounds safe.”</p>
<p>Barry should have thought longer about how this conversation would go, because he’s already running out of words. There’s no logic behind his reason for wanting to go to the Otherworld—it’s entirely impulse and curiosity and, admittedly, fascination with Len. “I trust him,” he says. “You were the one who always told us faeries can’t lie.”</p>
<p>“But they can be tricksy as hell!” Joe raising his voice this soon is never a good sign. Barry curls in on himself, suddenly faced with the prospect that he might not get Joe’s blessing to go. “What are you gonna do if you cross over and get stuck there? What’s that gonna do—never mind Iris, although you said you promised you’d come back for her, and never mind me, what about your dad? You made promises to him, and you can’t exactly get him out of that cell if you’re trapped in another world.”</p>
<p>Barry rocks slowly side to side. “He said he wanted me to go,” he murmurs. </p>
<p>“Your dad and I will never see eye to eye on magic,” Joe says, “but I doubt he meant he wanted you to go and get stuck there. What if the crossing damages you—hurts your body too bad to risk coming back across? Or worse, your mind? How do you know you won’t end up some docile pet the moment you cross into the Otherworld?”</p>
<p>Barry stiffens his legs to stop himself from rocking. “It’s my risk to take,” he says. “I can argue with you all night, but that’s what it boils down to—that it’s my risk to take. I know you want us safe, I know you don’t want to see us hurt, but sometimes what’s safe for us isn’t what’s best for us. And this is a risk I think could be the best choice I’ll make. It’s one my dad said he regretted not making, and I don’t want to live my life wondering what could have been.”</p>
<p>Joe opens his mouth for a retort, closes it again, and sighs. “I know it’s your call,” he agrees quietly. “You have no idea how scary it is, raising <em>people.</em> If you do it right, there’s a point where they go off and make their own choices and there’s not a damn thing you can do except worry.”</p>
<p>When he puts it like that, Barry feels a pang of regret intense enough to take his breath away. He knows Joe worries for them, but he hadn’t put it into perspective as powerlessness before. It isn’t quite the same, but imagining the helplessness he’d feel if Iris were to embark on a journey of her own against his advice puts it into perspective a little. “I’ll come back,” he offers pitifully. </p>
<p>Joe shakes his head and lays a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “We both know you can’t promise that,” he corrects. “But if you can, and you do come back, I might never let you leave again. So go, see the sights, and then get yourself back here to stay.”</p>
<p>That’s not something Barry can promise, but it’s the best compromise he’ll get; he’s gotten into enough arguments with Joe to know that. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and means it.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Rather than wait until the next day, which would be the sensible thing to do, Barry returns to the forest at dusk. Within a few steps, he regrets his decision. Star Wood is shady and dim on a well-lit day; at dusk, it’s a dark haze of potential dangers, and Barry doesn’t dare bring a torch. He stumbles forward, doing his best to find the path to Len’s faery ring by muscle memory.<p>“What are you doing in my forest, little one?” </p>
<p>The voice comes with a flare of bizarrely dark light—Barry can see everything around him in sharp relief, but there’s no noticeable glow. When he turns around, there’s a woman standing behind him wreathed in tendrils of the same odd, dark grey light now illuminating the path. </p>
<p>“I’m looking for someone,” he explains. </p>
<p>“You’re going the wrong way.” She smiles. She has the same sharp teeth and pointed ears as Len. Were it not for the strange light, Barry would think her a faery. She beckons him toward her, and suddenly, like a mirage, he can see echoes—or are there multiple?—of her illuminating the way out of the forest. </p>
<p><em>Will o’ the wisp,</em> Barry realizes. “No,” he says softly, wary of offending her. “That’s the wrong way. I need to go deeper into the forest.”</p>
<p>She tilts her head, still smiling that mischievous grin. “How can you be sure?” He notes that, once she knows where he’s destined, she doesn’t tell him it’s the wrong way—will o’ the wisps, like faeries, can’t lie, only trick. “It’s dark. You might have gotten turned around.”</p>
<p>“I’ve been in the forest before,” he explains sheepishly. “I know my way in the daylight. I’ve never ventured in when it’s dark.”</p>
<p>She flits closer. Barry stands perfectly still while she circles him. Whatever she finds, it makes her step back and hum in satisfaction. “You’re Len’s little toy,” she pronounces. “He’s asked that you be allowed to pass. Very well, then, little one.” Once again, Barry sees many of her, leading off in a direction that looks slightly more correct. “I can take you to him.”</p>
<p>“This is the fastest way to get to Len’s faery ring?” he checks. There’s no point allowing her any room to mislead him.</p>
<p>“Yes,” she says, and he believes her. “This is the fastest way to find Len.”</p>
<p>Barry follows the will o’ the wisp along a path that looks more and more familiar as he goes. She stops beside a tree and points into the little clearing where he found the yellow roses. “This is where you need to be, little one,” she says. “I’m not going in with you.”</p>
<p>“Can will o’ the wisps not enter faery rings?” Barry asks in confusion. He knew even less of them than he did of faeries, and wondered why they might be excluded from the Otherworld. </p>
<p>The will o’ the wisp looks fleetingly sorrowful. “Go to your faery, little one,” she murmurs and vanishes.</p>
<p>Hesitantly, Barry steps into the faery ring. He doesn’t know if it will feel different this time now that he’s committed to going along, but nothing seems to change. When nothing happens, he calls out, “Len?”</p>
<p>“I’m here.” The voice comes from behind him. Barry whirls around to find Len staring at him, his eyes roving over Barry’s body in a way too searching to be seductive. “Well,” he laughs, stepping closer without looking up to meet Barry’s eyes. “For someone going to another world, you sure pack light.”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t sure what I could bring that would survive the trip,” Barry admits bashfully. He reaches out and touches the ring still hanging from a cord around Len’s neck. “And you already have my most prized possession.”</p>
<p>Len hums in agreement. “That I do.” This time, he looks up, though still not directly into Barry’s eyes. “You’re sure you want to cross? This is a decision you can’t take back. Even if you return…the Otherworld isn’t something you’ll forget.”</p>
<p>Barry squares his shoulders. He’s not going to let himself doubt now, so close to the transition he’s promised himself he’ll make. “Yes. I want to go with you, I want to see.”</p>
<p>Len takes Barry’s hand and bids him, “Hold tight.” Barry casts a final glance around the clearing, but as he looks, it fades away. For the space of a terrified heartbeat, the air goes still, almost dead. Barry can hear nothing, feel and see nothing, not even Len in front of him. Then, just as quickly, static crackles. The air comes alive, whirling and gusting and bristling with electricity. Barry is caught in a lightning storm, and he can’t tell which way is out. The electricity stings, and with the howling wind, he feels sure he’ll be torn apart into sparking little pieces.</p>
<p>A lightning bolt strikes his chest, just over his heart. The pain is like nothing he’s ever felt before. He’s flying apart, blasted to atoms—and then there’s nothing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Barry wakes feeling lazy-warm and refreshed. He hasn’t slept this well in a long time. When he opens his eyes, expecting to see the familiar wooden ceiling of his bedroom at home, he’s greeted instead by a worried faery face.</p>
<p>“You’re awake.” Len squeezes Barry’s hand. He’s been…holding Barry’s hand. Barry isn’t able to process the implications of this thought because even a brief glimpse of Len’s eyes effectively scrambles his thoughts. </p>
<p>“I-I yeah.” Once Len looks away, Barry tries to drag his thoughts into a semblance of order. “How long was I out? And did I actually get struck by lightning when we crossed over?”</p>
<p>“That explains it,” Len murmurs. More loudly, clearly to distinguish his answer from his evident astonishment, he explains, “You were unconscious for a week. And I didn’t know until just now—to me, we appeared to cross safely, save that you collapsed when we reached this side.”</p>
<p>“A week?” Barry blanches. Has he really wasted a week of his time in the Otherworld? And more importantly, “Have you been sitting at my bedside for a week?”</p>
<p>Len nods. “It’s common for faery patrons of new humans to take time off to stay with them. I’m not neglecting my duties, if that’s your concern.”</p>
<p>That was part of it, Barry supposes. More than that, he’s astonished that a faery whose relationship to him is so nebulous would sit a prolonged and attentive vigil for him. “Yeah, but you didn’t need…you could have…” He sits up, unsure where he intends to go but not wanting to lie down anymore. As he does, he feels a gentle tug around his neck and a weight shifting against his chest. When he looks down, his mother’s ring is hanging on its familiar cord around his neck. Tears well in his eyes. “You gave it back?”</p>
<p>“I told you it was yours again if you gave me something more valuable to you,” Len reminds him. He gestures around the bedroom, then taps Barry’s chest just above the ring. “In coming here, you essentially gave me yourself. How could I deny you your ring when you did that?”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t know what to do with the swell of emotion in his chest other than lean forward and pull Len into an embrace. Len stiffens but doesn’t push him away. “You know that’s not why I came, right?” he asks, muffled in Len’s shoulder. “To get my ring back, or to be yours. I want to see the Otherworld, I want to explore. Anything that…” He pulls back, suddenly shy about what he wants to say. “Anything that happens between us along the way is, well. Welcome, but not the goal.”</p>
<p>Len nods and gives him a toothy grin. “I guess I can work with that.” </p>
<p>Slowly, giving Barry plenty of time to draw him back into an embrace, Len gets to his feet and beckons Barry to the edge of the bed. “If you want to explore the Otherworld, might as well start with the house, right? It’s…” He ducks his head, smiling, as though the show of humility is just that: a show. “It’s probably one of the nicer houses you’ll see. Faeries typically build their own—I gather humans don’t?—and I have—” the grin widens “—particular tastes.”</p>
<p>“Depends on the human, honestly,” Barry admits absently as he gets his first good look at the room. The walls are bare, polished wood, as is the ceiling overhead. The bedframe is exquisite metalwork, coiled and twisted with four firm posts. The wide window in the wall has panes that, as Barry watches, change from frosted to clear.</p>
<p>“No need for curtains,” Len explains, nodding at the window. “It changes with the light—or if you touch it.” He watches as Barry wanders over to the window. “Are you so eager to have a look outside?”</p>
<p>“Yes!” Barry lays his hand on the window and peers out. The world beyond is fantastically different to anything he’s seen in Central Keep. Massive, ancient trees line the yard. Flowers bloom in abundance, and the grass waves tall and free. The sky overhead is a patchwork of clouds and sunlight—at least that explains the changing of the window, which Len said was based on the light. “It’s so beautiful.”</p>
<p>“This you could find if you took the time to look around the forest,” Len scoffs. He comes up behind Barry and gazes out the window with him. Then he links his fingers through Barry’s and tugs gently on his hand. “Follow me.”</p>
<p>Obediently, Barry trails him out into the hallway. The floor under their feet is covered with a thick, plush, richly-colored rug; the walls are the same gleaming wood as the ones in Barry’s bedroom. Sconces in the walls and small chandeliers dangling from the ceiling would provide flickering firelight after sundown. Barry glances back at his door and finds it stained a deeper red-brown than the walls with no other identifying features. Each of the other doors in the hallway has a metal marker at about eye-level—a snowflake, a flickering flame, a winding ribbon of glittering gold. </p>
<p>“My bedroom,” Len explains, nodding at the room with the snowflake, “and rooms for my nearest and dearest.” He pauses in front of the room with the bronze-and-copper flame. “The only other person I helped cross over. He also had quite an experience when he crossed, though it left him with fire manipulation abilities to match the love of fire he had even before he crossed over.”</p>
<p>“Wait…crossing over can give people abilities?” That would have been good to know, but looking back, Barry supposes he never really asked.</p>
<p>Len gives him a look as though he can’t believe Barry wouldn’t have put that together. “The Otherworld is shrouded in magic,” he explains. “The same magic that manifested as lightning to you touches everyone in different ways. Faeries can work with it, we understand it, but humans who cross over encounter it in their own ways. For many, it magnifies what was already there. For you…” He stares at Barry anew. “Lightning-strike crossovers are incredibly rare. I know of maybe one other…possibly two, though one is more myth than proven fact. It’s not amplification, it’s…giving of power.”</p>
<p>Barry isn’t sure he understands the distinction. Nonetheless, he touches his chest, the spot right over his heart where the lightning struck. It doesn’t feel any different—there’s no lingering pain or sensitivity. He doubts that, if he took off his tunic, he would have any scars. “So I have magic now?” he asks.</p>
<p>Len shrugs. “Like faery magic? No, I doubt it. But you’ll have something, some touch of the Otherworld—like Mick’s fire.” He smiles at the door. </p>
<p>“He’s dear to you,” Barry deduces. </p>
<p>Len curls in on himself, looking as though Barry has hit a sore spot. “He was running from,” he murmurs, “not running to. I was a means to get away, and…I think he still counts me dear, but…” He shakes his head, his eyes distant. “It was complicated from the beginning.”</p>
<p>The rest of the tour of the house is noticeably more subdued. Len shows Barry the bathroom nearest his bedroom, which is tiled in dark stone and fitted with brass. It makes the room feel a bit small, but it’s so sleek and elegant that Barry can’t complain. This dark-tiled pattern continues in the kitchen, which boasts a large oven, a tiled cooking fireplace, and a lovely dark-stained wooden table. Barry is awestricken at the fountain in the corner of the room, a beautiful stone-and-metal contraption with three separate spouts: a swan’s beak and two fishes’ mouths. The handle for drawing water turns rather than pumps, and Len takes great pride in showing Barry the gears that make it work. </p>
<p>“You’ll soon learn how much faeries delight in complicated mechanisms,” he says, with a conspiratorial air as though letting Barry in on a great secret. “A neverending competition between our society and the dwarves, with no winner but those who like figuring out how these things work…” He smiles a yet-more-impish grin and admits, “Or breaking them.”</p>
<p>“I’m guessing you’re the latter?” Barry is very much the former. The tiny, exquisitely crafted gears remind him of the work that went into fashioning Gideon. He'd based her design on some of the tools he’d seen his parents make when he was small. His father must have learned from the same person who offered him a chance to see the Otherworld, Barry concludes, because he’s seldom seen anything like it elsewhere. </p>
<p>“I’m both.” Len twines his fingers lightly through Barry’s. The easy touch sends a little spark of eagerness through him. Only when Len pulls back, flicking his wrist as though in pain, does Barry realize he did in fact spark. </p>
<p>“I’m so sorry!”</p>
<p>“Don’t be, it didn’t hurt.” Len’s tone is both dismissive and impressed. Barry feels a brief flare of pride for putting that kind of awe in his voice. “I wonder what that was. The stories I’ve heard of those touched by lightning in their crossing…” He shakes his head. “Never mind. Whatever that is, I suspect we’ll see plenty of it.”</p>
<p>Sheepishly, Barry follows him through the rest of the house: a sitting room, a formal dining room, a workroom dotted with rough-edged gears and small plates of metal. “And this isn’t your trade?” Barry clarifies, gawking at the workroom. “It’s just your pastime?”</p>
<p>Len nods. “I told you, remember? When I’m not on sentry duty, I work in the court. This…” He gestures at the workroom. “Calms my mind. I like figuring out how things work, taking them apart and putting them together again.”</p>
<p>Barry nods. “I’m the same way! Knowing how something works, whether it’s a tool or a person, I just…” Belatedly, he remembers how unusual that sounds. He’s not supposed to analyze people that way. “I work better that way,” he finishes shyly. </p>
<p>Len’s brow furrows. “No need to be ashamed. What, do humans not…try to figure out how people work? Is that something they <em>know</em>?”</p>
<p>Barry shrugs. He wishes he knew, but every time he asked Iris, she just looked at him oddly. “That’s certainly how they act, but I don’t know, I might have misunderstood.” Quietly, he confesses, “I think I do that a lot.” </p>
<p>Poor Len, he thinks suddenly. He invited Barry over to the Otherworld to share something good with him without realizing how much work Barry is. Just because Barry feels at ease around Len doesn’t mean that feeling goes both ways, he reminds himself. He’s felt at ease with people before and only heard later that they couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Or worse, what if he tricked Len into believing he was worth bringing across, only for him to learn the truth now?</p>
<p>“Easy,” Len soothes. He rubs his hands over Barry’s shoulders. “You got lost in your head, I think.” </p>
<p>“I’m sorry for…” Barry gestures at himself. “This. Me. It’s not something I…I mean I know you said I sounded like I would be more at ease in the Otherworld, but I might have misled you…”</p>
<p>“Easy,” Len soothes again. This time, he tips Barry’s chin up and coaxes him to meet his eyes. Barry’s thoughts scatter into peaceful emptiness. “You’re welcome here. I brought you over, and I wouldn’t do that for just anyone. You’re a very odd human, Barry, and I mean that in the best possible way.”</p>
<p>Barry smiles, the words ringing completely true with no thoughts to contradict them. Len approves. He’s welcome here. </p>
<p>“Come.” Len beckons him back toward the sitting room. Some of the haze clears, but Barry is left feeling dazed and happy and convinced of his welcome. “I don’t know if you’re ready to go outside yet. Perhaps one more day with you all to myself.”</p>
<p>Barry follows him to the sitting room. He stumbles as he sits down and finds himself marveling at the ache in his stomach. “I’m starving,” he murmurs. “Please tell me you didn’t let me go a week without eating?”</p>
<p>“Of course not.” Len looks offended that he would believe such a thing. “It was mostly things like mushed berries in cream, but I fed you.” He doesn’t sit down. “Do you need something to eat?”</p>
<p>Barry nods. He’s not entirely sure he trusts himself to get back up. He hasn’t been this hungry in…ever. “Yes please.”</p>
<p>Len isn’t gone long. When he returns, he has a plate full of fruits and vegetables: massive, bright red strawberries, grapes the size of plums, bite-sized tomatoes, and slices of carrot. He stops, apparently in response to something he sees on Barry’s face. “Is this not what you wanted?”</p>
<p>“With your teeth, I guess I thought you were mostly carnivorous,” Barry explains. “Also I’ve never in my life seen grapes that size.”</p>
<p>Len smirks and sets the plate on his lap. “I’ll have to show you the garden. There was a…mishap, I guess. I was so attentively watching after you that I let the grapes grow too long.”</p>
<p>“And they get bigger when that happens?” Barry asks in shock. He picks up a grape and it still feels perfectly firm and ripe, just massive. “I thought they’d go bad.”</p>
<p>Len shrugs, feigning confusion although he looks nothing short of thrilled with this response. “They’re as saturated in Otherworld magic as everything else. Yeah, they behave a little oddly.”</p>
<p>Barry knows he shouldn’t eat quickly, even with his stomach aching so badly; he’ll make himself sick. That does nothing to keep him from devouring first the grapes, then the carrots, without pause. When he looks up, Len is staring. </p>
<p>“So you do have speed,” he says. </p>
<p>“What?” Sheepishly, Barry wipes his fingers on a napkin. “I guess I ate a little quickly, yes, sorry about that.”</p>
<p>Len shakes his head, wide-eyed. “Don’t apologize. The lightning strike, that’s usually what it does.” Barry still feels completely bewildered. Len explains, “When you ate, your hand moved so quickly between the plate and your mouth that it blurred.”</p>
<p>Barry promptly tries to do it again. His hand doesn’t blur; however, when he looks up to tell Len, he finds him frozen, mouth still open as though in the middle of speaking. </p>
<p>Time resumes with a clatter when Barry bolts to his feet and sends the plate flying. He doesn’t manage to catch it. Strawberries and tomatoes burst across the floor, and Barry is terrified that they’ll splatter on the rug and leave permanent stains. At the last second, Len throws out a hand. A thin layer of ice forms atop the rug, and the berries and tomatoes freeze on impact. </p>
<p>“I’m so sorry!” Barry blurts, staring at the frozen rug. How could he be so clumsy? Whatever new powers he has, they should have enabled him to catch the plate after he so thoughtlessly sent it flying (as if the thought of new powers isn’t startling enough on its own).</p>
<p>“Don’t be,” Len assures him, “I’ll take any excuse to use that spell.” Now that the rug is safe, he’s staring with single-minded fascination at Barry. “The lightning strike really did grant you speed. That’s incredibly rare.”</p>
<p>Barry kneels down on the ice and starts gathering up the frozen berries and tomatoes. “I think it gave me the wrong thing,” he babbles. “I’m too clumsy to move magically fast, I’ll only make more mistakes, is there a way to tell the magic it was wrong? Will it take it back if I cross back over?”</p>
<p>Len laughs and bends down to help him. “I don’t think it works that way. This is the power it gave you—you’re going to have to learn to use it.”</p>
<p>When all the now-frozen food has been put back on the plate, Barry stands back and watches Len remove the ice with a sweep of his hand. “I’m sorry again for the mess,” he whispers. He truly is terrible. To inconvenience Len like this so soon after he made a point to tell Barry how welcome he is…He’d deserve to be sent home in disgrace, if that’s what Len decides. </p>
<p>“This explains why you were so hungry.” Len takes the tray and flicks his fingers. The ice melts away from the berries and tomatoes, leaving them slightly too soft but still edible. “You don’t just move more quickly—everything about you is faster, including how quickly you use the food you eat.” He holds up a berry. Barry remembers enjoying being hand-fed when they ate together in the woods, but so close to his clumsy disaster, he feels guilty taking any more of Len’s effort. “Go on. You need to eat.”</p>
<p>Slowly, Barry leans forward and takes a hesitant bite out of the berry. It’s no less tasty for its brief stint in ice, and its juice runs all down his chin. Barry makes a humiliated noise and wipes his face with his palm. “I’m so sorry—”</p>
<p>“It’s all right, they do that.” Len looks pleased to see him so messy. Barry is bewildered. “It means they grew well—it’s a compliment.”</p>
<p>Bashfully, Barry reaches for the napkin to wipe his now-sticky hand clean. He sets it back on the tray and, for lack of anything better to say, suggests, “You should show me your garden!”</p>
<p>“One more berry before we go,” Len coaxes. He holds up another berry and, more cautiously this time, Barry bites into it. Juice still trickles down his chin. This time, at least, he grabs the napkin to wipe it away. “I don’t want you weak with hunger another time.”</p>
<p>“I don’t either,” Barry admits. If he never feels that way again, so hungry it turned to nausea, he’ll be content. </p>
<p>Once Barry finishes enough food that Len is satisfied, Len leads him to a wooden door, larger than the rest, topped with a semicircle of the same light-sensitive glass that makes up the windows in Barry’s room. Barry’s heart leaps into his throat. They’re going outside, he realizes—his first glimpse of the rest of the Otherworld. </p>
<p>When Len opens the door, sunlight streams into the front hall. Barry stares. A path paved in large, irregular stones leads away from the front door and joins with the paths from other…well, they must be houses, but they don’t look like any houses Barry has seen. Some of them are mounds covered by the same long-growing grasses that surround the path, in which only the doors and windows are visible; others are artfully arranged stones covered in vines, or, in one instance, a trio of trees growing inward over a gleaming metal door. He sees several of the same gleaming, complicated metal contraptions as the fountain in Len’s kitchen. They might also be water fountains, but based on what Len told him in the kitchen, he thinks they might be wholly decorative. </p>
<p>“What are the metal things?” he asks, nodding at the various sculptures. </p>
<p>“Well, that one—” Len points at a sculpture that looks like birds flying “—is a water source, mostly for travelers. I told you, we can move with the wind, but it’s not effortless. Many young faeries overextend themselves and need to make unexpected stops to rest and drink. That one—” He points at a gleaming metal figure peering around the house of trees “—is an elaborate doorbell. Shake the hand, and noises echo through the house.”</p>
<p>Barry turns to evaluate Len’s house. It’s made of stones—if Barry hadn’t just been inside, he’d have thought it the cairn of some playful giant. A vine must have grown around it at some point, but it’s all hardened wood; there’s no green left. Playful metal cats surround the house, some posed as though slinking through the grass, others frozen as if pouncing.</p>
<p>“What do they do?” Barry points at the cats. </p>
<p>“They’re perimeter guards.” Len indicates the largest cat, which sits just to the left of the path, one of its paws lifted disdainfully. “That one activates a field that goes from cat to cat. Anyone who crosses it sets off an alarm inside the house—they’re little birds perched in the corners of the rooms, I’ll have to show you when we go in.”</p>
<p>Barry’s eyes widen. That would have been tremendously useful—he remembers several nights spent in fear because people had come to their house in search of Joe after various high-profile arrests. Having reliable early warning might have saved them subsequent nights spent sleepless in fear. “You made that yourself?”</p>
<p>“The birds were Lisa’s idea,” Len admits. “I wanted the cats to scream until she pointed out that our neighbors would hate me. And I would hate me too,” he adds. “That kind of noise is something I can only handle with advance notice.”</p>
<p>Barry casts a glance across the nearby homes. “Where does Lisa live? Nearby?”</p>
<p>“No, she lives in closer to the city.” Len points down the road. It disappears off into the distance, but beyond where it ceases to be distinct, Barry can make out sunlight gleaming on glass and polished stone. </p>
<p>“A city?” he asks curiously. “Not a castle?” He’d been picturing a grand castle the likes of which he’s only heard referenced in stories. Somehow, the Otherworld seems less mystical if there are no lofty castles. </p>
<p>Len chuckles at that. “No. We associate castles with the kind of…well, merciless government of human monarchies. We have courts—more voices mean more perspectives and more inclusive, widely beneficial policies.” He presses closer against Barry’s side and points at some of the nearby homes. “To answer your earlier question, the trees-house belongs to Rosa Dillon and her human, Sam—the Otherworld magic enabled him to move through reflective surfaces, so the metal door helps him come and go from the house without ever needing to open it. That house, there—” He points at a pile of stones not unlike his own house, save that these seem to be smoldering as though there’s a fire inside “—is where Mick lives.”</p>
<p>“Your friend with the fire magic,” Barry recalls. He wants to meet this Mick, out of some vague but insistent feeling that anyone this important to Len is someone he ought to get to know.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Len agrees softly. “He modeled it on mine. I like his better.”</p>
<p>Barry turns to look at the other houses, wondering what kind of faeries live in each one. Do most of them have humans that they’ve brought across? He’s about to ask when he spies what looks like red lightning. “What’s that? Do you have such odd storms here?”</p>
<p>“No.” Len’s brow furrows. “I don’t know what that is.”</p>
<p>Almost as soon as Barry sees it, it’s upon them. He finds himself enveloped in a cocoon of red lightning with a <em>man</em>—not quite fae, but not quite human, either. Unlike Len’s eyes, which are wider than human eyes but still similar, this man’s eyes are pure red without pupil or sclera to be seen. Barry knows those eyes—he’d seen them the night his mother was killed. </p>
<p>“You?” he gasps, unable to muster the energy for a scream. </p>
<p>“You’re the new lightning-kissed,” he says in a voice that vibrates through Barry’s bones. The red lightning around them crackles. </p>
<p>“Wh—you mean when I crossed over?” Barry is overwhelmed. He wants to lash out and hide, and above all, he wants <em>answers</em>. “The lightning that struck me?” He stares anew at the man in front of him. “Len said there were others—he meant <em>you</em>?”</p>
<p>The man scoffs and looks him over. “You’re a child,” he says. Then his eyes widen. “All this time…and in a way, I win.”</p>
<p>Barry glances at Len for help. He can’t take this thing alone, especially with new powers he knows nothing about. This man killed his mother and was gone in the space of a heartbeat; Barry stands no chance. Rather than find Len struggling through the red lightning storm, he sees him frozen, still staring off into the distance. </p>
<p>“He can’t help you,” the red-eyed man says, grinning in a way Barry hopes never to see again. “We’re moving too quickly for him to hear us, or even know I’m here.”</p>
<p>Barry can’t let this man know how terrified he is. He musters all the helpless anger that’s simmered inside him for years. “I’ll make you pay for what you did to my mother!”</p>
<p>“Make <em>me</em> pay?” The red-eyed man laughs and reaches out a hand. Barry flinches back just in time to avoid contact. “Once you know what I know, you’ll beg me to make your father pay for what he did to her.”</p>
<p>Before Barry can answer, the lightning storm is gone. He whips around, looking for any trace of the red-eyed man. Instead, he runs into Len at full speed. They fall to the ground together. Barry barely manages to avoid landing forcefully on Len’s chest. </p>
<p>“Hey.” Len reaches up and runs his hand over Barry’s cheek. “Did something happen as that lightning storm blew past? You’re shaking.”</p>
<p>“That wasn’t just a lightning storm.” Barry clings to him. “It was the other man who was touched by lightning when he crossed. Len, that’s the man who killed my mother.”</p>
<p>Len sits bolt upright and looks around. Barry shakes his head. There are tears prickling the backs of his eyes, but oh no, he mustn’t cry. He’s been told off for crying so many times… “He’s gone, he’s gone. He talked to me in the lightning, quicker than you could tell he was there. He said he—” Barry can’t possibly give voice to it. That would make it real. “I don’t know what he wanted with me!”</p>
<p>“I’ll keep you safe,” Len promises. </p>
<p>“You can’t!” Barry bursts out. “He’s too fast, your perimeter guards won’t give us any warning. He can be in and out—he could kill you, or me, or—” His head snaps around to look back at the path. It’s foolish; there’s no way of tracking where the red-eyed man went. “He said he might hurt my father, he might be on his way to Central Keep!”</p>
<p>Len’s face turns cold and serious. “What exactly did he say to you?” he asks in a tone that promises retribution if they ever catch the red-eyed man.</p>
<p>“He said…” Barry tries to make sense of the cryptic things the man said to him. He’d sounded like he was having a conversation with himself and allowing Barry to listen in. “He said he’d won somehow. When I accused him of killing my mother, he…” He still can’t believe the audacity. As his fear fades, anger replaces it, so blazing-hot and sudden that it steals his focus on anything else. “He made it sound like my father had done worse to her. Like killing her was <em>merciful</em>.”</p>
<p>Len scoffs. “He was messing with your head,” he says, his tone gentle despite the cold rage in his eyes. “Whatever he meant by that, it was distorted—might even be an outright lie, given that he is…or was…human, not fae. You’ll get your answers, right before you pay him back for what he did to your family.”</p>
<p>“I want to tear him apart,” Barry confesses. It’s his deepest, most fearful secret, one he’s never shared for fear of terrifying his dad or his lovely foster family. They’d hate him if they knew how much loathing he carries in his heart. (They’d be right to, he reminds himself, as he has every night for years.) “I want to see him suffer for what he did—to my mother first, then to my father when he had to take the blame.”</p>
<p>“And to you,” Len adds. He pulls Barry closer to him and holds him so tight he almost feels safe. “You’ve suffered too, even if you think yours is the least of the pain he inflicted. Believe me, you deserve to tear him apart for what he’s done.”</p>
<p>Barry lets out a furious sob. He hates this, when his emotions get so tangled that they topple out one on top of another. “I thought I was past this, all this hate, and then <em>he</em> shows up and I’m an angry child again—I don’t want this!”</p>
<p>“Then come with me.” Len takes him in his arms as if he weighs nothing, carries him back inside, and shuts the door with a heavy <em>thud.</em> As soon as it’s closed, he speaks a few words that Barry doesn’t recognize. A chill seeps into the air. “Warding,” he explains. “Though if that thing was human, it may not buy us as much time as if it were fae.”</p>
<p>Being inside helps a little bit, though not as much as Barry wishes it did. He buries his face in Len’s neck. “You’d said you’d heard of other people who were touched by lightning when they crossed. Do you know him? Do you know anything about him?” At this point, even the least amount of information would be useful, given that Barry knows nothing except that he’s a killer. </p>
<p>Len carries Barry back to the sitting room, settles in an armchair, and helps Barry get comfortable in his lap. “Only rumors,” he admits. “Like you, he was human, and was brought across into the Otherworld. If his powers appeared shortly after he crossed over, as yours did…he would have been brought across about thirty, maybe thirty-five years ago. That’s when people first reported seeing red lightning.”</p>
<p>“That wasn’t long ago, especially in the Otherworld,” Barry says, shocked. He’d expected to hear this used-to-be-human monster was centuries old, not a few decades. “Would there be records of who brought him across? Anything?”</p>
<p>“Yes, if we knew his name—a faery patron has to report anyone they help cross over. Without his name, the best we could get are guesses.” Len shrugs. “Rumor says he killed his patron—grew envious that he would never have as much control over Otherworld magic as a faery and killed them out of jealousy. Some say his patron disavowed him out of shame at what he’d become.”</p>
<p>“Is that allowed?” Barry feels suddenly queasy at the thought of Len being able to disavow him just for the shock of him becoming a speedster. </p>
<p>“No, no.” Len rocks Barry slowly back and forth. It doesn’t help the queasy feeling. “It’s one thing for someone to decide they want some distance from their patron, as Mick did, but to disavow a human in the Otherworld? No, it’s a criminal offense.”</p>
<p>Barry relaxes at that. Len can’t just give him up. He’ll be safe and provided for. Even if Len decides he doesn’t want him, hopefully he’ll take him home rather than forsake him in an unfamiliar world. “Do you know anything else about him?” he asks, rather than let Len know the turn of his thoughts.</p>
<p>“Well, if it was he who killed your mother, he can either pass freely between worlds—which I suspect is true, given his speed—or he has a faery helper.” When Barry tilts his head, confused, Len elaborates. “Most humans can’t move between the human world and the Otherworld without a faery’s help. I suspect it’s different for him—and, in all likelihood, for you—because of the nature of your abilities.”</p>
<p>Barry ought to pursue more information about the man in the red lightning, but he can’t stop a swell of hope at Len’s words. “I can cross as I wish?” he asks, delighted. “I can go back, see my family, even if you’re unable to take me?”</p>
<p>Len shrugs guiltily. “I suspect so. Even if you can move freely, I’m not sure what it will feel like. Clearly the journey here was a lot…though you were also struck by lightning, which is unlikely to happen if you cross in either direction again.” He lays his hand in the center of Barry’s chest, almost exactly where the lightning had struck. Barry guides him slightly up and to the left. </p>
<p>“There,” he murmurs, pressing Len’s hand tightly down. “That’s where I was struck.” He feels something dig into his chest and remembers his mother’s ring, now safe over his heart where it belongs. He hopes Len can feel it too, so he’ll have context for Barry saying, “All these years, and I finally know who did it.”</p>
<p>Len’s eyes soften. Before he can say anything, there’s a knock at the door. Both of them spring to their feet. Len peers out a peephole, but before he can make a decision, a rumbly voice calls out, “Len? Lemme in, asshole, I saw the lightning! Wanna make sure you’re okay.”</p>
<p>“Remember how close Mick’s house is?” Len asks as an aside. While Barry is still puzzling over the connection, Len lets the door swing open. A broad-shouldered, rough-faced man with incongruously wide eyes steps into the house and looks Len over. </p>
<p>“Not injured,” he grumbles. “That’s good. Oh.” He catches sight of Barry, who suddenly feels small and anxious. This must be Mick, the other human Len helped cross over—the one with whom things were complicated. Barry isn’t worth Len’s affection when he could give it to someone he’s known longer, someone who so clearly cares about him. Someone who…is reaching out to Barry. “So you’re Len’s new human.”</p>
<p>“Barry, this is Mick. Mick, this is Barry, of the ‘spent a week unconscious and made me worry’ notoriety.” Len’s attempt at humor falls hopelessly flat. </p>
<p>Mick makes a quiet sound of acknowledgment and studies Barry. “Len might be the most magic of the three of us, but he’s reckless. Used to checking up on him. Now…” He casts a contemplative glance back at the door, perhaps remembering what ensued outside. “Ought to worry most about you here, shouldn’t I? Since the red lightning came right for you?”</p>
<p>Barry nods. His legs tremble and he sinks back down to the floor. The fear and anger toward the man in the red lightning, slightly faded after his talk with Len, return full force. They feel physical, like energy under his skin. He’s so used to this feeling that it takes Len’s soft exclamation for him to look down and realize there are sparks dancing on his skin. </p>
<p>“I have the same powers he does,” he explains to Mick. “The lightning…chose me, I guess, when I crossed over. But…it’s more than that.” He hesitates, unsure how many details to give. He doesn’t know Mick well enough to share the entire story. Mick will have to earn that, if Barry sees him more frequently. “He’s come after my family before, and…he wants me because of that.”</p>
<p>“Huh.” Mick frowns. Then, in a tone so matter-of-fact that it takes Barry over a minute to register the words, he asks, “Is it ‘cause you’ve got faery blood?”</p>
<p>Barry is about to admit that the man in the lightning came after his mother when he realizes what Mick has asked. “What? No, I don’t—I can’t—” Faery blood? That makes no sense—he would never have been allowed to stay in Central Keep if he had faery blood. (If he has faery blood, one or both of his parents might have some magical abilities. They should have been able to fight the man in the red lightning. His mother should still be alive.)</p>
<p>Mick points at himself. “Quarter. Why Len brought me over, ‘cause he knew I didn’t fit in. Got used to seeing it in other people. They’re easier to make sense of.” Whatever expression Barry’s making—he himself has no idea—motivates Mick to explain, in a surprisingly gentle voice, “Thing you do with your eyes. People get weird when you look at them direct, right? Biggest tell. Plus, it’s…” He shrugs. “Dunno. Body language. Distinct, but I can’t explain it. Just know.”</p>
<p>“But I can’t be…” Barry thinks back to what his father said—that he’d declined an invitation to cross over to the Otherworld. He’d pushed Barry to cross over, saying he didn’t want Barry to make his mistake. He’d never said what became of the faery who asked him. Barry thinks of his parents’ trips to Star Wood, trips that garnered scorn and confusion from other citizens of the Keep. “I need to see my father.”</p>
<p>Len’s mind must have run along similar paths to Barry’s, because the sudden, desperate demand just gets a crisp nod from him. “Do you want my help crossing over? With that thing after you, I don’t want you alone, especially not disturbing the border magic in a way that might draw his attention.”</p>
<p>Barry nods. His body feels strangely numb, and he wonders idly if he’ll pass out or if this is a new manifestation of his lightning power. He doesn’t think so—when he gets caught in his head, physical sensations are odd. That was something no one ever seemed to understand. Would Mick? Would Len? “Yeah. Yeah, yes please.”</p>
<p>Len asks no further questions. That in itself is shocking, when something like this would have earned him an hour-long debate with Joe—well-meant, and intended to keep him safe, but useless in a situation where Barry needs to <em>go.</em> Being pulled outside and finding a faery ring in the grass not far from the house is a further shock. “This is your post?” Barry asks. </p>
<p>Len nods and urges him inside. “Yes, that’s right. Hold onto me.”</p>
<p>Barry glances back at the house in confusion, looking for Mick. He sees him standing in the doorway, arms folded over his chest and a frown creasing his face. Barry keeps his eyes on him, wondering if he’s worried or angry, until suddenly there’s no Mick, doorway, or house. The air is bristling with lightning. Barry turns back to Len in shock and finds his face focused but calm. His hands haven’t left Barry’s; they’re cool and steady, and the sparks crawling over Barry’s skin are nowhere to be seen on Len’s. To him, they must be in some quiet liminal realm. The lightning is Barry’s (<em>his alone,</em> he thinks possessively, before remembering the man in the red lightning).</p>
<p>They return to the human realm in Len’s familiar faery ring. Without waiting for permission, Barry takes off. The trees pass by in a blur. He sees the will o’ the wisp who led him to Len, sees a fire and ice demon on either side of the path, sees a young sorcerer moving metal. All of them are standing utterly still. But that’s not right, he remembers—he’s simply moving so fast they seem not to be moving at all. </p>
<p>When he stops, he’s in the prison—not just at the gate waiting for Eddie to let him in, but at his father’s cell door. Light is streaming in the windows. It’s midday; with the guards bustling about and all the prisoners awake, he could be caught. He doesn’t care. </p>
<p>“Barry?” Inside the cell, Henry jumps to his feet. He drops his voice to a worried whisper as he approaches the bars. “Champ, why are you here? I thought you were going to the Otherworld, I thought you were going to have a good life with your faery…”</p>
<p>“Like you had?” Barry asks urgently. He throws a nervous glance over his shoulder, checking the corridor. “That’s why you pushed me so hard, isn’t it—there’s faery blood in our line, isn’t there, somewhere?”</p>
<p>Henry sighs and hangs his head. His hand joins Barry’s on the bars—a rarity for fear that the guards will think Barry is passing him tools. Now, Barry senses his father needs the reassuring touch as much as he does. “I should have known you’d find out over there,” he murmurs. “Should have told you myself, champ. I’m sorry. Had my reasons for keeping it from you when you were young, but now…you deserve to know. Your mother…she was the faery who invited me to the Otherworld.”</p>
<p>Barry knows it’s pathetic that his first question is, “But then how could she have died?” He knows faeries are vulnerable to some things, like iron, and can certainly be killed, but…his mother had magic. She should have fought—did she? Did he walk in on the end of a magical battle against a man too fast to see? How long could she have withstood an opponent that fast, even with magic?</p>
<p>“Champ. Champ, hey.” His father’s hand is against his cheek, his palm warm and dry in a way that helps ground Barry. He tries to still his thoughts, which are whirling like a lightning storm. “Your mother was a fighter, Barry. She gave that thing in the red lightning hell. If she hadn’t…I think it would have killed me first, or...or you. What she did, it was to buy us time.”</p>
<p>Barry lets out a soft sob, as much out of frantic overwhelm as grief at the new, more sorrowful twist on a memory he’d thought he knew well. “Why didn’t you go with her?” he murmurs. “Wouldn’t she have been safer in the Otherworld? Maybe that…that thing, the man in the lightning, wouldn’t have gotten to her if she’d been there.”</p>
<p>Henry sighs and drops his hand back to the bars. “It’s crossed my mind—got nothing but time in here to wonder. I don’t know if she would or not. I don’t know if that’s a choice she could have asked me to make.” Before Barry can ask, he explains, “Everything I told you about why I didn’t cross over to the Otherworld is true. I was comfortable here, I had people here who needed me—and she told me she had nothing to keep her on the other side. I got the sense there might have been something there she wanted to put behind her.”</p>
<p>Barry wonders if that might have been the man in the red lightning, though what connection he would have had to Barry’s mother, he can only guess. He expects his father would have made that connection too, many times, and wanted to know for sure. Maybe, in the Otherworld, Barry can discover the link. </p>
<p>“She glamoured herself, hid her magic,” Henry adds. “But she needed to feel connected to it, to know it was still there—so we would go into Star Wood, she would cast simple spells, and every time amazed me anew.” He looks up, his eyes bright with love and awe even this many years later. “She was a wonder, your mother.”</p>
<p>Barry sniffles. He can’t believe he was deprived of the chance to know his mother as she truly was. The anger that’s been simmering in his gut since laying eyes on the man in the lightning returns, threatening to boil over. “Why did you never tell me? You could have taken me with you, I could have seen her like that! Why wouldn’t you let me know that part of her—know that part of <em>myself?</em> For years I’ve thought something was wrong with me, with how hard it is to fit in, and now this? I had to find out from a man I barely know and not from my own father?”</p>
<p>Henry sighs and very deliberately drops his gaze. Barry realizes he’s never asked why his father always made a point to look away from his eyes when they were having a serious talk. “Because Central Keep has never been kind to anything magical, but especially to faeries. I didn’t want you blurting out what you were, or what your mother was, without thinking. Especially the more you met with Iris—Joe is a good man, a just man, but he’s distrustful of magic, and I couldn’t bear the thought of a careless comment costing you the chance to see your dearest friend.”</p>
<p>Barry makes a sharp, helpless sound. His father is right—he’s always been prone to blurting out the wrong thing in fits of emotion, and having magic was a secret that would have potentially led to the three of them being shunned from the Keep. That knowledge doesn’t lessen the sting. “You should have told me when I asked you about the Otherworld. I shouldn’t have had to learn it from them.”</p>
<p>“I know,” Henry agrees quietly. “But with Eddie here? How could I tell you a secret I’ve kept for years, something so integral to who you are, with listening ears so close?”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t have an answer to that. His gut is churning and his head is pounding; sparks crackle on his skin. Henry has to pull his hands away from the bars to escape the sting of them. </p>
<p>“You have magic?” he asks, nodding at Barry’s hands.</p>
<p>“The Otherworld magic touched me when I crossed the first time—lightning, speed. Just like the man who killed her.” Barry shifts away from the bars and glances down the hall again. “I can’t stay, I have to go somewhere to think.”</p>
<p>Henry sighs and murmurs, “I love you, champ. I’m so, so sorry for keeping this from you.”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t have the energy left to address that. He just runs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Barry stops, he’s in the Wests’ kitchen. Iris is halfway through fixing herself some lunch. She looks up in shock at the rush of air, then drops her plate back onto the counter and runs over to embrace him. “Barry!”</p>
<p>“Iris.” He pulls her close and starts rocking immediately, trying to soothe himself with her presence. The way she’s holding him is just the wrong side of too tight, but he doesn’t care. The pressure is just what he needs. “Iris, I…I didn’t know where else to go…”</p>
<p>“You came back,” she murmurs. His tone must frighten her, because she pulls back and stares at him. “What did they do to you? If that Len hurt you, he’ll answer to me…”</p>
<p>“It’s okay, Len didn’t do anything.” At the last second, Barry balks. Now he sees, a little bit, why Henry didn’t tell him. When he was younger and foolish, he would have told Iris this news without a second thought. Now, the way she’d accused Len of being a threat is foremost in his mind. Even with all her work with magical creatures, she still doubts faeries’ trustworthiness. She might change her opinion of him just for that… </p>
<p>No. Iris isn’t that shallow, he reminds himself. With years of friendship, years of trust, between them, she wouldn’t change her views just for this. If he can’t tell her, there’s no one left in the human realm for him to turn to. She deserves his openness, especially when he can see in her face that she’s spent the last week worried for him. </p>
<p>He explains the situation in brief, from the magic that touched him as he crossed over to finding its malicious counterpart in the man in the red lightning. Then, shakily, he sits down at the table and adds, “He’s come for me because he knew my mother.”</p>
<p>“From before he crossed over?” Iris sits next to him, her eyes locked on his face. She’d followed the connection with ease—that their shared powers meant the man in the red lightning had been human once. (She kindly hasn’t brought up the corollary: that Barry might, by some quirk of his new powers, end up as twisted as the man who killed his mother. Barry is grateful. After a day like today, that thought might break him.) </p>
<p>Barry shakes his head. “From the Otherworld, I think. My mother was a faery. I think the man in the red lightning knew her from the Otherworld somehow and followed her here.”</p>
<p>Iris sucks in a shocked breath. “Your mother? That doesn’t…” Whatever she’s about to say trails away. “Oh. No, that actually makes a lot of sense.” With a shudder, she asks, “You don’t think he followed her because he wanted her to come back? Murdered by a jealous suitor, it wouldn’t be the first time.”</p>
<p>Barry makes a soft, disgusted sound. Iris is right—there have been several high-profile murders of that nature since his mother’s death. Joe, who was often called to investigate, tended to greet the news by remarking bitterly that it would happen for as long as men considered women prizes to be won. The thought that such a man could have wanted his mother…no wonder she was willing to give up the Otherworld for the human realm. With such a man haunting her, it must have felt like the only way to get peace. </p>
<p>“It doesn’t alarm you that…” Barry’s not sure he should press this point. “That I have faery blood?”</p>
<p>Iris clasps his hands. “Oh, Barry. No, it doesn’t alarm me. I don’t think it should. I’ve known you long enough to know how you think—there’s nothing deceptive about you. The faery penchant for mind games, I don’t see that in you.”</p>
<p>Barry sighs. “That…that’s still wrong. Of the people I’ve met in the Otherworld…” Admittedly a limited few, but he’s met several faeries or part-faeries, especially counting his mother. “…the only person who played mind games was the man in the red lightning, and he was human. At least he was at some point,” he adds on afterthought. “The Otherworld feels like home to me.”</p>
<p>Iris tilts her head. She doesn’t look upset at the correction, just confused. “Then why are you here discussing this with me, rather than seeking comfort from Len?”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t know. He <em>will</em> return to Len, and when he does, this is a conversation they’ll have to have. Why that wasn’t his first instinct, he’s not sure. “Because I know you better,” he realizes slowly. “You know me, familiar is comforting. Len fascinates me, and I want to return to him, but while I’m here, before I go back? Why wouldn’t I seek the opinion of my oldest and dearest friend?”</p>
<p>Iris smiles sorrowfully and looks down at their joined hands. “I wanted you to come back to me,” she admits. “I’ve worried about you. But…you’re not back to stay, are you?”</p>
<p>Barry shakes his head. Of that, he’s certain. “I’ll always have ties here—you, Joe, my father. But the Otherworld feels right, and I haven’t even really explored. I want to go back. But I’ll visit often, now that I know I can.” </p>
<p>“Unless they run you out of the Keep for your magic.” Iris glances toward the door and scowls. </p>
<p>Barry hadn’t thought of that. The possibility makes his blood run cold. He’d hurried here without a thought for what people would think of a lightning storm in the city. Surely that’s what he looks like. Idly, he wonders what color his lightning is. He hopes it isn’t red. </p>
<p>“Speaking of attitudes toward magic.” Iris bites her lip and rubs her thumb against the wooden tabletop. “My father’s going to be…”</p>
<p>“Alarmed?” Barry ventures. The image of how Joe would have reacted to a lightning storm entering his house makes him flinch. Joe is a good man and generally level-headed, but magic makes him feel powerless, and when he feels powerless, he becomes defensive. Barry isn’t sure he can blame him, when he thinks of how helpless and overwhelmed he’d felt upon meeting the man in the red lightning. </p>
<p>“Will you stay to tell him?” Iris glances up but stops shy of meeting his eyes. Barry realizes abruptly that he can’t remember her ever looking him directly in the eye. If his gaze has even a fraction of the power of Len’s, he can’t blame her. “This isn’t something that’s my place to share.”</p>
<p>Barry thinks of how late Joe sometimes stays out. He doesn’t have that kind of time. As much as he’s glad to see Iris again, and as much as it means to share this with her, he wants to go back to Len. “I’ll come again in a few days’ time, later in the day, to tell him. By then, maybe I’ll have more answers about the man in the red lightning.”</p>
<p>Iris lets out a carefully-measured breath. “I’m going to have to get used to saying goodbye.”</p>
<p>That sentence brings tears to Barry’s eyes. He was never good at parting, either. “I’ll be back,” he promises. It sounds so hollow, but he has no other comfort to offer. </p>
<p>Iris nods and squeezes his hand one more time. “Hurry back,” she says. “And if that man in the red lightning hurts you, I don’t care if I have to cross worlds to fight him. He’ll deal with me.”</p>
<p>That’s a scenario Barry never wants. Iris is formidable—with Joe as one of the longest-serving members of the guard, she couldn’t help but pick up incredible self-defense—but the man in the red lightning could kill her in the blink of an eye. If a faery using all her magic couldn’t repel him for long, Iris stands no chance. Barry knows better than to say that, of course. “I hope it never comes to that.”</p>
<p>In the blink of an eye, he’s back in the forest. Len is looking up, but his gaze is still somewhere off in the distance. Barry doesn’t even have the energy left to make a game out of the fact that he’s so much faster than his perceptive faery can comprehend. “I’m here,” he says softly.</p>
<p>“Barry!” Len whirls to face him. Whatever he sees makes him tug Barry into a fierce hug. “What happened, are you hurt?”</p>
<p>“No, just confused.” Barry doesn’t want to admit how angry he is. That isn’t Len’s problem, and no one has ever wanted to deal with his anger before. Len will be no different. “I want to go back.”</p>
<p>Len takes his hands and warns, “Hold on.”</p>
<p>They return to the Otherworld in the same place as when they left—in the middle of the lovely wild grounds outside Len’s house. Little has changed, save for the fact that the sunlight is now distinctly midafternoon-ish and that Mick has vacated the doorway. Despite how little has changed, Barry feels like he’s seeing it all anew. This was his mother’s world. Had she chosen differently, this could have been his home, rather than Central Keep. Would she still be alive if she’d stayed?</p>
<p>“Let’s get you inside,” Len says softly. He wraps his arms around Barry’s waist and guides him back to the front door. “You’ve run fast and far with very little to eat. I don’t want you to collapse again.”</p>
<p>It takes Len mentioning it for Barry to realize how faint he feels. “That would be good,” he agrees quietly. </p>
<p>Inside, once he has a bit of food in his belly, Barry relays what his father told him. Len listens impassively. When the story is done, he looks off into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. </p>
<p>“Say something,” Barry says. It comes out half-furious, half-pleading. He doesn’t know what kind of acknowledgment he wants, only that this silence is too distressing to bear. </p>
<p>“If you know your mother’s maiden name, we could visit the room of records,” Len says slowly. He glances back at Barry, his expression too soft and kind. Barry doesn’t want pity; he wants someone to make sense of his whirling thoughts for him, because he can’t. “We would at least be able to find out her birth date and her first liminal day as an adult—faeries cross to the human world for the first time on a liminal day once they mature. It’s the easiest time to cross, which is important for someone who hasn’t done so before. If she brought anyone across, there would be record of that as well, but I doubt she did, if she left so readily.”</p>
<p>“Nora Thompson,” Barry recalls. Fleetingly, he wonders if that was a name she’d invented when she crossed over. They’ll find out soon, he supposes. “Would they really have all that information?”</p>
<p>Len nods. “Record-keeping is methodical here—much more than it appears to be in human courts, though I suppose our interest in easily accessible information isn’t universal.” His eyes narrow briefly. “Admittedly, that sometimes crosses into prying…”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t ask what he means by that. If Len wants him to know, he’ll tell him. He sips some water and rocks slowly side to side. “Can we go now? I want to find out as much as I can about her as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>Len shifts closer and takes Barry’s hand in both of his. “I think you should sleep,” he says in a tone that brooks no argument. Barry almost snaps at him for that tone—he’s not Barry’s guardian, he doesn’t get to talk to him like a child—but he’s right. This day feels like it’s gone on forever, and Barry’s nerves are frayed. He can’t handle a trip into a faery city when he’s afraid the next bit of new information will make him break down all over again. “We’ll go in the morning, and use the time it takes to get there to make a plan for how to keep you safe from the man in the red lightning.”</p>
<p>Barry doubts a plan is the only thing they need, but he won’t say that just now. Instead, he hangs his head and nods. “You’re right, I should rest. I just…” </p>
<p>Against his better judgment, he glances at the front door. Len said he’d warded it, but he’d also said he wasn’t sure it would keep the man in the red lightning out. “I haven’t been this afraid to sleep since I was a child,” he confesses, unable to look at Len’s face for fear of the disappointment he’ll see there. </p>
<p>“You won’t be alone.” Len helps him to his feet. Barry could wave him away—he’s steady now that he’s had something to eat—but he likes the firmness of Len’s touch too much to give it up. “I kept watch over you for a week. If it helps you sleep, I can keep watch for another night.”</p>
<p>Barry doesn’t know whether to find that adorable or creepy. Instead, he offers a compromise he can tolerate. “Share my bed? Not…sexually, not yet, just…” He’s humiliated as soon as the words leave his mouth. Len is going to think him a clingy child. “Never mind, it’s…”</p>
<p>“Barry.” Len’s firm voice cuts through his babbling without difficulty. When Barry glances up, avoiding eye contact, Len’s expression is kind. “I would like that very much.”</p>
<p>Len leads him back through the house to the bedroom where he’d woken up. It feels like forever since he’s seen it, though he knows that’s partly because he’d only seen it for a few minutes. When they enter, the changing glass is frosted over, keeping anyone outside from looking into the softly-lighted room. The chandelier overhead, whose twisted metal matches the bedframe, is lit despite Barry knowing Len couldn’t have done so. Maybe Mick did, he thinks, or perhaps it’s enchanted to light on its own at a certain hour. The bed is still in disarray—he’d neglected to make it when he got up. That feels like so long ago. </p>
<p>“You really sat vigil for me for a week?” he asks, taking in the room. How had Len not lost his mind from staying in this room, large and beautiful as it is?</p>
<p>Len looks almost embarrassed by the question. “I did,” he agrees quietly. “You know the only other person I’d helped to cross was Mick, and he wasn’t affected by the crossing. I didn’t know what to do other than keep watch.”</p>
<p>It’s a particularly sweet admission from this faery who doesn’t seem to enjoy admitting that he doesn’t know something. Barry squeezes his hand and tugs him toward the bed. “Well, this time you get to join me and rest. You don’t just have to sit.”</p>
<p>“Who says I didn’t?” Len’s grin looks slightly artificial. Barry gets the sense it’s because he’s cluing Barry in on the joke, not because he isn’t amused. “Keeping watch over a cute boy for days on end, of course I lay down at your side once in awhile.”</p>
<p>Barry takes off his boots. Then, reluctantly, he removes his mother’s ring and sets it on the bedside table. “I have your word you won’t take it back?”</p>
<p>Len runs his fingertip over the ring and shakes his head. “I gave it back to you for a reason. It’s yours to keep.”</p>
<p>After removing the boots and the ring—the things that would be most obviously uncomfortable—Barry considers asking for a change of clothes. He can see how he would like it to play out, the night after a less stressful day—Len doing the gentlemanly thing and looking away while Barry retreats to a corner to change, but in the end unable to stop himself stealing glances that Barry wouldn’t mind in the slightest. Another night. Tonight, he’s too tired to bother changing, let alone invite the prospect of something like that. Instead, he crawls under the covers fully dressed.</p>
<p>“Join me?” he asks, holding out his hand to Len.</p>
<p>Len sinks down into bed at his side. He’s warm, and when Barry scoots closer, Len pulls him into his arms. “Hi, sleepy boy.”</p>
<p>Barry knows what he’s about to ask is potentially dangerous if Len is feeling mischievous. By now, though, he’s too tired to care. Just for tonight, he wants to sleep without nightmares. “Can you make it so I don’t dream?” he murmurs. “With magic, or…”</p>
<p>Len cups Barry’s cheek and coaxes him to look into his eyes. “Of course I can, sweet boy.”</p>
<p>Barry’s thoughts flicker. Strange, he thinks dimly, they’re not quite melting away they had in the forest. Maybe it’s because of his lightning magic? But they’re certainly hazy now, like wispy clouds rolling by; he can acknowledge their presence, smile at their shape, before they blur away. It’s a pleasant feeling, being just aware enough to feel how drifty he is. </p>
<p>“Sleep,” Len says, and he does. For once, he doesn’t dream.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Barry wakes to sunlight streaming in the now-clear-glass window. At his side, Len is awake and watching him through lazy, half-open eyes. “Good morning,” he murmurs. “Seemed like you slept well.”</p>
<p>Barry nods. The more awake he gets, the more he remembers the previous day, and the more shame starts to curdle in his belly. He’d been so emotional—how had Len had any energy to deal with him? Why had he not told Barry to shut up and think it through logically? How did Barry keep ending up with too-kind friends and family—his parents, Joe and Iris, now Len—when everyone who knew him less well couldn’t stand him? “I’m sorry for being so clingy last night.”</p>
<p>“Don’t apologize.” Len squeezes him close. “Yesterday would have been too much for me, too.”</p>
<p>Thankfully, Barry no longer feels quite as raw as he did yesterday, or that little bit of compassion might have sent him sobbing. Instead, he burrows his face into Len’s chest, trying to hide from the light streaming into the room. “Thank you for being so understanding,” he murmurs. </p>
<p>“I’m your patron.” Len runs his fingers through Barry’s hair. “I’m supposed to try to empathize with you, or how can I keep you safe?”</p>
<p>Something about Len’s words makes Barry sit bolt upright. He’s had an idea, but he can’t put words to it yet. Instead, he lunges out of bed and reaches for his mother’s ring. “Len. How common is it for someone who crossed over to leave their patron like Mick did?”</p>
<p>Len raises his eyebrows. “Not very. I had to explain multiple times that it was his choice, that I wasn’t abandoning him. Some people still scorn me for it.”</p>
<p>“And there are no grounds for a faery patron to leave the person they brought over?” That seems a poor system to Barry. He sees the benefit in assuming people without much magic are dependents—it’s better than leaving them alone in a system they don’t understand and can’t navigate—but he’s sure there must be exceptions where a patron misjudged someone’s character. </p>
<p>“None, it’s considered a grave crime.” Len looks utterly bewildered. Seeing that Barry isn’t slowing down, he rolls out of bed and puts on his boots. “Am I that bad a nighttime companion, that you’re trying to get away from me?”</p>
<p>“No, no!” Barry flaps his hands at him. “My mother, I think my mother brought that man across!” </p>
<p>Len sits down on the edge of the bed with a little huff of breath. “It’s possible,” he affirms. His eyes have gone distant. Is he trying to remember something? Barry forces himself to be still, not wanting to interrupt Len’s concentration. “He certainly wouldn’t be the only human to drive his patron away.” His eyes become inexplicably sad. There’s a story there that’s not yet Barry’s to hear, and not his focus right now. </p>
<p>“We need to get to the room of records,” Barry urges. “We can find out that man’s name!”</p>
<p>“We need to get food in you first.” Len leaps lightly to his feet and slips across the room to the door. He’s right, of course, but Barry’s mind won’t stop racing for trivial things like food. “The time it takes to reach the records room isn’t inconsiderable, and you need your strength in case we encounter that thing on the way.”</p>
<p>Right. That’s something Barry has to consider, something he forgot in his haste. He’s not ready for a fight against someone with his same powers when he’s only barely begun to figure out how to use his. He knows he can run quickly, but beyond that—his limits? His strengths? Not the faintest idea. “You’re right. Breakfast, then the room of records.”</p>
<p>Len goes out of his way to fix an enormous breakfast: oatmeal with fruit and honey, oddly bland unsalted eggs, thick fresh bread, and little seared cubes of meat, of which Len eats more than Barry. He doesn’t realize how jittery he is as he eats until Len cautions, “Slow down. I don’t know how long food eaten at superspeed lasts, compared to what you eat at a normal pace.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Right.” With an effort, Barry slows down. Len’s mention of his speed brings an oddly crucial question to the front of his mind. “Do you know what color my lightning is? Do I even have any when I run? Am I not fast enough for that yet?”</p>
<p>“Barry.” Thankfully, Len just sounds amused by his rambling. “I saw it, yes, when you ran back from visiting your family. It’s yellow.”</p>
<p>“Yellow.” This thought is oddly soothing. “Like the roses that started all this.”</p>
<p>Len smiles. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes, it is.”</p>
<p>Buoyed by the thought that he could never be mistaken for the man in the red lightning, Barry finishes his third helping of oatmeal and his second helping of eggs. “I can clean up, since you cooked,” he offers. </p>
<p>“No,” Len cautions. “Save your strength. You’ve never traveled in the Otherworld yet—I’m not sure how it will affect you.” With a playful grin, he explains, “It made Mick queasy.”</p>
<p>“How do you travel?” Barry asks curiously. He has mental images of carriages drawn by automaton horses to match the beautiful, inventive metalwork he’s already seen. That would be slow, though, he realizes; now that he’s able to run so quickly, he would be unbearably bored on a carriage ride. </p>
<p>“We travel with the wind,” Len reminds him. He watches Barry out of the corner of his eye, as though he’s expecting a strong reaction. Barry remembers Len mentioning it in passing in the forest. He’d been impressed then; now, knowing he’ll soon experience it for himself, he feels jittery and excited. “We can take passengers, but it’s not a skill humans can learn. You, of course, could run yourself into the city if I couldn’t take you; other humans take carriages if they travel alone.”</p>
<p>Barry is intrigued now. If faeries can travel with the wind, does that mean Len can keep up to him? Can he only travel like that in the Otherworld? So many questions and not enough time, he reminds himself. They have to go to the records room promptly. The sooner they have all the information, the safer they’ll be. “So you’re going to take me?”</p>
<p>Len nods and laces their fingers together. “You don’t know the way.” </p>
<p>Oh, yes, that would be a minor setback. Barry keeps holding tightly to him as they make their way to the front door. He doesn’t know when they’ll…take off? Is that the phrasing he wants?...but he doesn’t want to let go when they do. </p>
<p>Len holds the door open for him and follows him outside. When he shuts it, he murmurs something under his breath, presumably to reinforce the warding. Barry’s blood turns to ice. The man in the red lightning could break in, lie in wait for them to come back, and surprise them upon entry. Would they have any warning?</p>
<p>“Yes, we would,” Len says when Barry asks. “The guard cats swivel if someone crosses the barrier while they’re active. It’s nothing an intruder would notice, but it lets me know if I come home to an intruder inside.”</p>
<p>“That’s incredible.” Once again, Barry wishes alarm systems like this were common in Central Keep—useful, elegant, and subtle. “But…what do we do if he breaks in?”</p>
<p>Len squeezes Barry’s hand. Barry knows his answer before he says a word. “I suppose we’ll figure that out if it happens.”</p>
<p>Taking off for the city is exhilarating, not least because it involves embracing Len tightly. Barry half-expects wings to materialize behind Len, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, with a rush of air, the world around them blurs. Wind whips Barry’s hair and clothes. When he yells in delight, the sound is torn away in the rush without him ever hearing it. </p>
<p>They never reach the city. Instead, pain flares through Barry’s side. The rush of air stops, and he’s suddenly skidding along the grass. Sliding on top of the early-morning dew helps absorb some of his speed, but the landing still stings. When he stops, he pushes himself up and looks for Len. Several feet away, Len is sprawled in the grass, utterly still. The man in the red lightning stands above him. </p>
<p>“Get away from him!” Barry bolts to his feet. He <em>cannot</em> let this monster hurt another person he loves. Without thinking, he bolts forward and tries to grab the man. The next thing he knows, he’s being held in the air with a hand around his throat. </p>
<p>“You really think you can use your speed against me?” The man sneers up at him. Barry kicks feebly, but he can barely get his feet up. “I was touched by lightning before you were ever born. I know tricks that you could never dream of learning, unless <em>I</em> teach them to you.”</p>
<p>“Like I would ever learn from you.” Barry’s vision is starting to blur at the edges. He slams his hands down on the man’s arm. That seems to do the trick—or maybe he just grew tired of Barry’s squirming. Either way, Barry finds himself dropped to the ground. The man kneels down next to him and wraps his fingers around Barry’s throat. He doesn’t tighten them, which is almost worse. This isn’t choking; it’s more like a mark of possession. Barry feels sick. </p>
<p>“Your mother was just as proud as you are, and just as scared.” </p>
<p>Barry lunges up at him. The man shoves him near-effortlessly back to the ground. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that!”</p>
<p>“Did she ever mention me?” He smiles in a way Barry hopes never to see again. “Eobard Thawne, the man she brought across to the Otherworld—the man she gave power, and simultaneously denied it?”</p>
<p>Eobard. A sickening name for a sickening creature. Barry doesn’t say that; he merely shakes his head, wondering what hold this man had over his mother.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think so.” Eobard tilts his head. “Your mother was fascinated by humanity, but the moment she brought me across—the moment she saw the power I was capable of harnessing, the things I could do if I was allowed to use Otherworld magic to its full extent…well. It challenged everything she knew. She fled from me, fled to the human world where mere mortals were no threat to her faery superiority.”</p>
<p>His own lightning belies his words. Barry watches, fascinated, as figures form from red lightning and voices emerge as if on the wind, almost too faint to hear. A woman, bristling with power but forcing herself to be gentle. <em>“This has gone far enough. I thought you were just adapting, that your powers were running away with you, but this—Eo, you’re killing people!”</em> A man, recognizably Eobard, wrapping his fingers around her throat just as he has them around Barry’s now. <em>“I’m killing to restore balance. Magic isn’t yours to hoard.”</em> Barry can’t stand to watch her struggle as she protests, <em>“Humans lash out in hate and fear too easily, just as you’re doing now. Magic isn’t a weapon to give to people who hate so much.”</em> </p>
<p>“She brought you over out of compassion,” Barry spits. That had to have been the reason. From what he knows of his mother, and from what he’s heard from Len, faeries don’t bring humans across unless they find some kind of connection. “She wanted you to find belonging here and you lashed out at what she offered you.”</p>
<p>“She denied me the only kind of belonging I wanted!” Eobard snaps. His fingers tighten around Barry’s throat. “I won’t give you that same chance.”</p>
<p>Iris had been right—jealous suitor. Across worlds, men’s jealousy for others’ freedom knows no bounds. Barry feels sick at the thought that his mother had to watch as Eobard scorned the gift she offered—belonging, safety, freedom—and tried to lay claim to her just because she was kind to him. “No wonder she ran from you,” he breathes. </p>
<p>“She ran because she found a new connection to the human world.” Eobard’s face creases in fury. “She put that above me. I won’t give you that chance. You led me right to everyone who might coerce you to go back, and I’ll make sure they never do.”</p>
<p>Barry’s first thought is Len, lying motionless in the grass. Did Eobard already kill him? When he looks over, Len is stirring feebly, his eyes fluttering. He’s alive. He’s waking up. Barry’s sigh of relief is cut short at a jolt of panic at what Eobard really means. Iris, Joe—his father, with whom his last words were so disappointed. They’re in danger. If his mother with all her magic couldn’t hold Eobard off, they stand no chance. They’ll never even see him coming. “Leave them alone!”</p>
<p>“Don’t even go looking for them.” Eobard’s voice lingers even as his red-lightning trail speeds away. “Your speed isn’t even close to mine. By the time you catch up, there will be no point.”</p>
<p>“Len!” Barry skitters to his side. He ought to take off after Eobard—he shouldn’t allow him even the barest head start—but he doesn’t know how to defeat him alone. Len at least knows of him—maybe he has an idea of his weaknesses. “Len, please be okay…”</p>
<p>Len sits up and shakes his head as though to clear it. “Oh, that hurts,” he sighs. “Did I run into something?” </p>
<p>Barry shakes his head. “The man in the red lightning, Eobard, he attacked us and he’s going after my family. I have to go after him but I don’t know how to fight him…”</p>
<p>“Barry.” Len grabs his hands. His grip is firm, steadying; Barry is able to focus on it through the haze of panic. “Run me to the faery ring. We have to get across.”</p>
<p>Barry has never run with someone before, but he hasn’t the time to worry about that. He grabs Len, holding him as tightly as he did when they flew; then he runs back toward Len’s house. The world doesn’t blur around him the way it did when he traveled with Len; it just seems utterly still. He passes motionless faeries in flight, halted carriages drawn by dark, wild-eyed horses. When they skid into the faery ring, he expects to have to let Len go. Instead, he’s enveloped once again in lightning. </p>
<p>“Barry.” The voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. That anything or anyone can speak in the midst of this lightning storm is enough of a shock, but the familiarity of the voice almost makes Barry let go of Len’s hands in his desperation to see where it’s coming from. How can his mother be speaking to him?</p>
<p>“Where are you?” he calls piteously. He feels like a child again and finds he doesn’t care. He just wants answers. </p>
<p>His mother’s voice sounds almost regretful. “I’m not your mother, beautiful boy. Hers is the voice that I thought would reach you best.”</p>
<p>Barry’s heart breaks anew. First he sees his mother in the lightning, now he hears her in the same. Neither one is real—of course not. “You’re the lightning.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” she agrees. </p>
<p>“Why are you talking to me?” Barry doesn’t have time for this. Even now, Eobard could be slaughtering his family. “Can you tell me how to win against someone who’s had decades to master magic that’s new to me?”</p>
<p>“No,” the lightning says mournfully. “That has to come from you. You’re right—he’s faster and more experienced than you, and on your own, you have little hope. But you have what he doesn’t.” <em>Connection,</em> Barry intuits. The lightning means that his family is his best hope. He only hopes he isn’t too late. “I wanted to tell you…like your mother, I chose wrong. I thought I saw hope in Eobard once, but if it was ever there, it’s gone now. I hope you can rectify my mistake.”</p>
<p>“So…you really did choose me?” For some pathetic reason, this is the information that sticks in his mind. </p>
<p>“Yes.” The voice in the lightning was starting to grow faint. Barry assumed that was his signal to be ready to run again. “Make me proud that I did, beautiful boy.”</p>
<p>They land in the forest, in the same spot he recognizes. He pays it no mind other than to acknowledge that they’re in the right place. He takes off instantly, then realizes he’s not sure where to go. Eobard could be attacking his father, or he might have started with Joe and Iris. </p>
<p>On instinct, Barry runs for his father’s cell. He assumes Eobard will follow the same path Barry himself took when he returned. Fortunately, he’s right. He bursts into the cell to find his father backed into a corner, hands outstretched, face creased in concentration. Eobard is in the middle of the cell, fighting as though against a gale-force wind. </p>
<p>“Get away!” Barry barely takes the time to set Len safely on his feet before he lunges at Eobard. He, too, hits the barrier Eobard is fighting; it feels less like wind than like wet clay. Both of them bounce away, intertwined. </p>
<p>“Barry?” His father sounds shocked. The moment his concentration breaks, the atmosphere in the cell changes. Magic. His father can work magic—little wonder, with years to learn from his mother. </p>
<p>Barry bolts to his feet at the same time as Eobard. There’s no doubt about it; Eobard is faster. Barry’s heart leaps into his throat. He saw his mother die; now he’s about to see his father killed too.</p>
<p>An icy blast slams into Eobard and knocks him against the cell wall. Len gestures for Barry to grab Henry. “Let’s get gone! Cold will slow him down, but not for long.”</p>
<p>Barry pauses, terrified that Eobard will lash out the moment he turns his back. As he watches, Eobard struggles to his feet and is knocked back down by another blast of icy air.</p>
<p>“<em>Now</em>, Barry!” Len snaps. </p>
<p>Barry runs. He scoops both Len and his father in his arms—too heavy, they’ll slow him down. Reluctantly, he leaves Len behind. Of the two of them, Eobard seems less interested in hurting Len, and Len is more capable of holding his own.</p>
<p>He drops his father off in the Wests’ kitchen without stopping to explain, runs back, grabs Len, and flees. He can feel strange lightning crackling around him in addition to his own—Eobard is right behind him. He won’t have time to explain. The moment he stops, they’re going to have to be ready to fight. </p>
<p>He bursts into the kitchen again and finds that, in the two seconds since he’s been gone, Joe has grabbed a spear and Iris has armed herself with the nearest knife. Both of them aim their weapons at the first thing they see, which happens to be Barry. He launches himself to one side, avoids being stabbed, and sets Len near his father. Then he turns back, lightning bristling, to face Eobard.</p>
<p>“You’ll never touch them,” he snaps. “And I’ll never want anything to do with you.”</p>
<p>Eobard dodges around him. Barry whirls, full-speed, and shoves him away. At the same time, Joe jabs with the spear. Barry is able to dodge; Eobard, knocked off his feet, is not. It rakes along his side. Blood drips onto the floor. Idly, Barry thinks that Joe will kill him for the mess, supposing they survive the fight. </p>
<p>“Such fire.” Eobard rolls back to his feet. He holds back from running long enough to sneer, “I’m going to delight in killing each and every one of you.” Then lightning crackles around him again. Barry lunges to meet him. Before they connect, a blast of icy air knocks Eobard back against the wall. </p>
<p>“Sorry,” Len drawls. “Fire’s not exactly my thing.”</p>
<p>Eobard struggles to his feet. This is the first time Barry has seen him visibly shaken or slow. Ice works, he’s glad to see. Before he can take the advantage Len has offered him or Len can attack again, the kitchen knife flies through the air end over end. It’s poorly balanced for throwing, but Iris has practiced so much that it still embeds in Eobard’s shoulder. </p>
<p>“Get the <em>hell</em> out of my house,” she snarls. </p>
<p>There’s no better opening. Barry lunges forward, catches Eobard around the throat, and pins him against the wall. In his mind’s eye, he can see the lightning-image of Eobard pinning his mother this way. Does that make this fair turnabout, or make Barry as sick as the man he’s pinning?</p>
<p>“You know there have been so many days I’ve wanted to kill you,” he snarls. His lightning whips around them, cocooning them as Eobard’s had done in the yard…what, only a day ago? “But the lightning chose <em>me</em> to rectify its mistake, to be better than you. And there’s no honor in killing, no matter what you believe.”</p>
<p>Eobard’s face contorts. “Then you can grieve honorably,” he spits before throwing Barry off and running—into a spear blown by an almighty gust of icy wind. Barry whirls to see what’s happened and finds Joe, Henry, and Len all standing with their arms outstretched. </p>
<p>“Huh,” Joe says in the aftermath. “Never thought I’d fight an intruder side-by-side with magic users, but like hell I would have let that thing touch my kids.” He wraps his arms tightly around Iris. Barry sees the way she stiffens—she’s too keyed up from the fight to want touched—but she doesn’t push him away. If Barry knows her, she’s going to go spar with someone to burn off that jittery energy. </p>
<p>Henry drops his hands and lets out an exhausted sigh. “How about fighting side-by-side with friends?” he offers. </p>
<p>“I mean.” Joe waves a finger between Barry and Henry. “You did tell me about the man in the red lightning, which is gonna be fun explaining to Singh, but I’m getting the impression there’s a whole lot you <em>didn’t</em> tell me.”</p>
<p>“Oh no.” Len raises his hands and makes as though to head for the door. “No, no, I don’t do domestic. Barry, I’ll be at our usual rendezvous.” He somehow manages not to make this sound lascivious, though Barry knows he could. </p>
<p>“Oh no you don’t,” Joe and Iris say near-simultaneously. Reluctantly, Len freezes. </p>
<p>Barry looks down at Eobard, who even in death appears to be sneering. He doesn’t quite manage to suppress a shudder. Never mind having proof of his death; some part of Barry will always be looking over his shoulder to see if this nightmare-man is back. However, the more immediate threat is having to explain this to the formidable Captain Singh. Thinking of the many discussions that will need to be had—Henry’s assisted escape, just as Singh always feared; a death in self-defense; and the much, much longer story of the man in the red lightning—he sighs, “It’s going to be a long night.”</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
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    <p>It is indeed a long night. Sometime just before daybreak, Barry is finally allowed to retire to his bedroom upstairs and sleep. He does so knowing it will be his last night in the keep—Singh’s orders. Neither he nor Len is allowed to return, though they’re permitted to meet with people in the forest. Everyone had unanimously and tactfully neglected to mention Henry’s magic, until he brought it up himself, saying that he’d always wanted to see the Otherworld. Len has offered him safe passage; Barry doesn’t know what will become of the three of them after that. </p>
<p>“And here I thought my family was odd.” Len has clearly been waiting for everyone else to make their way to their own rooms. He slinks in the door and perches on the edge of Barry’s bed, legs crossed. “Though I think I prefer your family’s version of odd, if I had to choose.”</p>
<p>Barry laughs into his pillow. “Just as well. I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot of them—though I would like to meet your family too, eventually.”</p>
<p>Len stretches out at his side. One of his arms settles comfortably over Barry’s waist. Barry enjoys the warm weight of it. “I think you’ll like my sister, when you meet her. She has a partner who…well, it’s complicated. They’ll explain, I’m sure, when you meet them.”</p>
<p>“I look forward to it.” Barry turns his head. In the semidarkness, he can just make out Len’s crooked grin. “You know, I haven’t just gotten to have a peaceful night with you yet?”</p>
<p>“Well.” Len chuckles. “I would say ‘may this be the first of many,’ but it’s technically morning already.”</p>
<p>Barry burrows his face into Len’s shoulder. He keeps waiting for the impact of what he saw earlier—what he did earlier, the whole protracted superspeed fight—to hit him, but it hasn’t yet. That might be for the best. Perhaps this way he’ll get one night, or morning, of uninterrupted rest. “Then I suppose we’ll have our first quiet night tomorrow night.”</p>
<p>To Barry’s surprise, Len’s lips press against his temple, feather-light and warm. “May that be the first of many,” he murmurs, almost too soft to hear. </p>
<p>Barry hums and presses an equally soft kiss to Len’s shoulder. “Good morning, faery mine.”</p>
<p>“Sleep well, Barry.”</p>
<p>Len holds him all through the morning as he sleeps. Barry sleeps deeply and, to his relief, doesn’t dream.</p>
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